


Tormack and Tava Beans

by sgamadison



Series: The Cabin Series [10]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-12 23:15:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2128110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sgamadison/pseuds/sgamadison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tormack and Tava Beans

**Author's Note:**

> The Cabin Series began as a response to the news of the cancellation of SGA in favor of the new show, SGU. At the time, very little was known about SGU except for tidbits here and there, and SGA had not finished airing yet. The early stories were definitely snarky send-ups as my reaction to the cancellation, but as time went on, the series took on a life of its own. 
> 
> The series opens with Atlantis being 'lost' and John seeking out Rodney, who was hiding out in a cabin in the Canadian woods. The two end up getting recruited to try and find Destiny and the missing personnel, but as the series unfolds, Team Sheppard ends up writing their own mission: to find Atlantis's sister city, the mythical Agartha. In this story, Agartha has been found, and yet is not all that it seems. While it is possible to read this as a standalone story, it would probably make more sense if you read the rest of the series first.
> 
> There are graphic scenes of violence and injury in this story, and for a while, things look really bad. I would just like to remind readers that I believe in happy endings. :-) This story was written for hilde, who requested an Agartha story. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and it certainly took a lot of people to beta this story. Much thanks go out to freekyDJ, selenic76, starry_diadem and pir8fancier. All mistakes (especially in the 1200 words I added after getting the story back!) are mine.

John had never given much thought to plants before. They were just sort of there on nearly every world they'd explored. Tall pines and conifers, fallen logs green with moss and lichen, steamy jungles with leaves the size of dinner plates, bogs covered with algae that looked deceptively like solid ground. Sometimes, plants were a little more interesting. Who could forget the planet with the mobile, carnivorous fly-traps that were about as cuddly as a velociraptor, or the clinging vines whose sap could dissolve metal?

As Rodney pointed out, plants should not behave like hazards in a video game.

For the most part, however, they were just there.

“Spikeweed? What’s that?” Sounded nasty. David Parrish and Sarah Abbot had cornered John on one of the upper walkways to talk plants with him. They didn’t look happy. _Go figure_.

On the other hand, Hawkeye, Sarah’s black and tan German Shepherd, was delighted to see John. He pushed his big head underneath John’s hand, begging John to pet him. John fondled his silky ears in a gentle attempt to deflect the drool. The dog’s coat was shiny, and for once, not covered with mud or burrs. Sarah must have just given him a bath. The dog mouthed his hand gently and John withdrew it to wipe it tactfully on his pant leg.

“Spikeweed is a member of the amaranth family.” David held his elbows close in to his body as he spoke, even as his hands shaped weeds in the air. Somewhere along the line, he must have realized that big gestures would lead to his inadvertently hitting someone with his long arms. “There are over sixty recognized species on Earth, and they’re used worldwide as herbs, cereals, and ornamental plants. Some cultures grind them into flour as well. The Pegasus variant, however, is covered with fine spines that embed in the mucous membranes and cause severe irritation to the animals that eat it. In fact—”

“Cut to the chase, doc.” John should have known better. Even after all this time, he forgot that he needed to set limits on an explanation if he didn’t want the scientists delivering a dissertation on the subject.

"The Pegasii are eating it." Sarah got to the point as usual; she seemed to only have been waiting for John to rein David in. “That's bad news. This stuff can be wickedly toxic. It concentrates the nitrates in the soil in its leaves. Normally animals won’t touch the stuff, but it becomes more palatable when the frost kills it." 

Sarah glanced out of the stained glass window, as though she could see to the mainland. John knew why—for the last several mornings, there’d been frost on the balcony railings, and the sea was leaden and gray. Here on Agartha, the autumn harvest was near; winter was nipping at its heels.

She turned back toward him, frowning. “When ingested in sufficient quantities, the spikeweed causes major kidney damage.”

"Well," John drawled, "we'll just tell them to stop eating it."

"I _tried_. It's not that simple." Sarah pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. The veterinarian and her dog had joined the expedition to Pegasus once they had discovered the lost city of Agartha. John still didn’t know how Elizabeth and _Fortune's_ AI of the same name had managed to collect the people that they’d wanted and needed in Pegasus, but somehow, they had. On a world with a resident population of flying horses, a veterinarian made a lot of sense. It didn’t hurt that she, too, had the ATA gene. "Until we began cultivating the land here to make ourselves self-sustaining, spikeweed wasn't all that abundant. We've inadvertently made it easier for it to grow. Once the Pegasii developed a taste for it, they began preferentially eating it. It's got to go, Colonel."

“So, we burn it. Problem solved.” 

“We can’t just burn the field.” David looked worried, a first for him. How often did you get a plant emergency? “Well, we can with the annual crops that have already been harvested. But a good bit of it is mixed in with the perennial plants like the tormack and tava beans. That’s going to have to be cleared by hand. We can’t till it under or burn it without affecting next year’s food supply.”

John frowned. “So what are we talking about here? An afternoon of weeding?”

Sarah and David exchanged a glance. David cleared his throat nervously. Once again, Sarah took the lead.

“More like all hands on deck for several days of weeding,” Sarah said. “We can’t let the Pegasii eat anymore of this stuff. I’ve got them coming in now pouring gallons of fluid out of their mouths. Puddles of saliva are forming where they stand.”

John made a face. “Um, thanks for the visual there. Why are they drooling so bad?”

Sarah looked grim. “It’s the spines on the leaves. Drooling is only a symptom. I’ve got animals at risk of dehydration, colic, and worse.”

John nodded. He got it. The winged horses were the planet’s main protection against detection—and hence, the Wraith, and any other unfriendlies, as well.

“Okay, Parrish, you’re in charge of coming up with a safe weed removal plan that will get the job done and protect our food sources for next year. Let’s meet in one hour with the department heads to get to work on this. Sarah, is there anything you need?”

Sarah shrugged. “So far, no one is terribly ill, and the drooling seems to stop if we can keep the Pegasii off the weed for twenty-four hours. But you know how they feel about confinement. Besides, there’s a limited number of stalls here in the city—not enough to house the entire population.”

“Right.” John mentally dropped his immediate plans for the afternoon. “Let me talk to them and see what I can do.”

****

The deck on the south pier had obviously been designed with Pegasii in mind. The area was open to the elements and free of obstruction on three sides, making it a logical landing site for flying horses. The decking itself was made out of a spongy material that seemed to absorb the shock of landing just as well as the sweet, loamy dirt on the mainland, and yet did not get slick in the rain, or when storms lashed the waves over the pier.

John could have flown over to the mainland. Like Atlantis, the city of Agartha, with its familiar starfish pattern, floated on the sea. Also like Atlantis, the city was equipped with puddle jumpers, which had been something of a relief to find, since they only had the one on _Fortune_. However, on a planet populated by the namesake of the Pegasus galaxy, there was one preferred mode of transportation. 

Flying on the back of one of them.

It was a rare privilege. Sentient and telepathic, they were at once familiar and yet alien. More than once John had gotten himself in trouble by assuming they were like horses, and yet more than any of the others in the expedition, they trusted him. It was because of his presence on the starship, _Fortune_ , that they’d chosen to reveal the planet to the crew when they had entered the solar system. Though it had been several years since that day, John still remembered it like it was yesterday. 

They’d arrived at the coordinates where all of Rodney’s calculations had indicated a planet should be—only to find empty space. Refusing to give up, John had held _Fortune_ steady while Rodney and Radek made sweeping scans, Rodney complaining all the while that there _had_ to be a planet there, due to the gravity well. Suddenly, the planet in question shimmered into existence. They’d all taken a deep breath and sat back in their seats when the home world of Agartha came into view. As near as Rodney could tell, the planet had no other designation, which made sense for a world that could hide itself from map designers, so Agartha-the-planet and Agartha-the-city were pretty much one and the same.

The shields over the city had dropped as their puddle jumper entered the atmosphere. They’d landed in Agartha to find a sleeping city much like Atlantis, with a working Stargate, a Control Chair, and two fully charged ZPMs. Oh, and Pegasii wheeling and turning in the skies overhead.

Just now, he could see a couple of Pegasii high above, soaring lazily with spread wings over the updrafts from the ocean’s surface. The day was pleasantly chilly—warm enough without a coat if he was moving briskly—though standing on the open deck was another matter. He turned up the collar on his black fleece pullover and zipped the zipper up to his chin. The sun glinted off the water; he shaded his eyes as he looked up at the sky. The wind tugged playfully at his hair and frothed the surface of the waves below into small whitecaps. He closed his eyes and called. _Storm Dancer_.

He stood there on the edge of the platform, facing the sea. He waited.

 _I am here_. The black stallion winked into existence in the sky above him, far enough away from the city to make an impressive diving run at the platform. John grinned and stepped back as the Pegasus folded his wings and plunged straight down toward the deck.

John held his ground just a few feet from the edge. Storm Dancer pulled up at the last second, opening his wings with a snap, and braking with two powerful downward stokes, even as he swung his legs forward for the landing in front of John. He touched down with a snort, blowing steam out his nostrils in the damp, cool air, shaking his head until his mane fell into tousled place.

 _Showoff_. John was still grinning as he came forward to stroke the Pegasus’s shining neck. Storm Dancer tucked his head down to sniff John over for treats, his wings curling around them protectively. Storm Dancer’s lips, soft as velvet, lifted the offered apple slice from John’s palm with a murmuring whicker. The sound resonated deep within John’s chest in a way that he could not explain. It spoke of belonging, home, and family. As much as he wanted to accept it without question, a small part of him resisted. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he wanted to believe in it so badly.

“Hey buddy.” Out of habit, like he used to do back on Earth with his father's expensive event horses, John spoke aloud to the Pegasus. He’d spoken then as though they’d understood him, and he did the same now with the creature that obviously did.

 _You amuse me. Words can get lost in the air. Why do you persist in casting them to the skies?_ The magnificent black stallion bobbed his head a few times. His outstretched wings shielded John from the worst of the wind, for which he was grateful. It was like he was almost being hugged by the glossy, black wings, giving him a feeling of inexplicable safety. 

He couldn’t remember the last time any of them had been safe before in Pegasus. Not really safe. Not like this. A small part of his brain questioned his willingness to accept that they _were_ safe. Safe to raise their families, to learn and study rather than merely stay alive. Hell, they had a Fine Arts Center, for crying out loud. Torren had playmates, too, as the colony looked to be self-sustaining. Why did he still have this small core of resistance?

The stallion snorted and tossed his head again, picking up on John’s thoughts, no doubt. “Look, Stormy, we’ve got a problem.”

_I know._

Storm Dancer looked at John with solemn eyes, and he knew that things were about to get more complicated.

****

The spikeweed was tenacious. The plant itself consisted of a fibrous stalk that was covered in thorns, growing in a bush about two to three feet tall. It had long roots and sent runners out in all directions under the surface of the ground. The leaves were fuzzed over with tiny, hair-like spines that worked their way through clothing and into your skin. It preferred the open ground that they'd cleared to grow their own food, and so had proliferated madly in the years they’d been on the planet. In particular, spikeweed seemed to thrive in the tormack plots. Not only was it problematic because the Guardian beings of the planet were eating it, the Pegasii were also trampling next year's food supply to get to it. Applying herbicide was out, unless they wanted to forgo the remainder of the fall harvest. 

The conversation about the spikeweed hadn’t gone well, however. According to Storm Dancer, the weed had been present on the planet for millennia. When occasionally ingested in small amounts, the plant gave the Pegasii visions that they’d relied on in determining when to hide the planet. It was just such a vision that had convinced the Council to reveal themselves to the expedition when __Fortune had come into range. The plant had never grown in such quantities before, and the Council was drunk with it. John had seen evidence of it himself, when he came across a field of Pegasii calmly eating spikeweed, all drooling heavily. It didn’t matter when John had explained that consuming the plant in such quantities could lead to colic and kidney failure. The Pegasii had looked at him as though he were part of their visions and continued to eat.

“Great,” Rodney had fumed when John held a briefing on the subject, “an addictive, psychotropic, _lethal_ plant that has religious meaning for a bunch of flying horses, who just so happen to be our best defense against the Wraith and everyone else out there. Oh, Pegasus Galaxy, you never fail to surprise and delight.”

A council of war against the spikeweed had been convened. Parrish had pointed out that it wasn’t sufficient to merely spray it—the dead plant was just as lethal, and Sarah had indicated that the recent frost seemed to have made it even more palatable than before. That was why John now found himself riding the Ancient equivalent of a bush-hogger across the open fields.

Parrish was in charge of Operation Spikeweed. His plan of operation was simple: brute force. “Any field that has already been harvested and is fallow for the winter, we’ll burn. Ronon has volunteered to lead the fire teams.”

Ronon had grinned at John when he’d glanced over in surprise. “I know a lot about your ‘scorched earth policy.’” Ronon had looked as though he couldn’t wait to light the first field on fire.

“Just make sure you contain your enthusiasm, Conan.” Rodney had sniped, somewhat predictably. “Some of us would like to eat this winter.”

“Wouldn’t hurt you to know what it is really like to be hungry, McKay.” Ronon shot back, but with less than his usual force. Ever since Rodney had lost weight, the fat jokes had lost much of their impact, thank god. 

Parrish had gone on. “The rest of us will work in teams on the cultivated areas. First we’ll cut the bushes down to size—right now they are so densely packed in the fields we can’t even get to the bases to pull them up. So we’ll bush hog first. The second teams will come through with weed-wackers and get everything the bush-hoggers missed. The third teams will use rakes and hoes to pull up the big pieces—I’ve got a burn pit set up so we’ll dispose of it there. Then the fourth teams will come through and pull up the stragglers. I’m telling you now, that’s going to be the bulk of it. With the frost, most of this stuff is already lying flat on the ground, and is so tightly adhered by the roots that we’ll probably have to pull it up by hand.”

“I wish I could help.” Elizabeth had looked as though she sincerely meant that, and John supposed that she really did. Since coming to Agartha, Rodney had been able to create a mobile holoemitter that allowed Elizabeth to move freely about the city, but given her lack of a physical body, she was still confined to either the city itself or onboard _Fortune._

“We’ll search the database for a means to controlling this problem next spring.” Fortune, the ship's AI, had spoken with quiet confidence. Ever since they’d settled in Agartha, Fortune had been spending more time in human form. John had long ago ceased to be uneasy around the AI, and at times felt as though she was the sister he’d never had. 

Not that he’d ever admit that.

He’d noted idly that Elizabeth in her hologram form looked much as he’d remembered her from the first days of the expedition. It occurred to him then that neither she nor Fortune would ever age, and the knowledge was bittersweet. After all that she’d been through, surviving a fatal accident because of Replicator nanites in her body, and then being captured by the Replicators themselves; Elizabeth deserved something for sacrificing herself to save Atlantis. Immortality wasn’t a bad trade-off. At least, John tried to convince himself of that. “You and Tuny can still keep the meeting with the ambassador from Finnark. You guys are better off without me there anyway. Tell ‘em something came up.”

“A horticultural emergency.” Parrish had been serious. 

“I wouldn’t tell anyone why this is so important though,” Sarah had added thoughtfully. “No need for anyone to know about the importance of the Pegasii to this world.”

“I think I can handle the state secret aspect of things.” Elizabeth’s response had been dry, but not unkind. Sarah flushed unattractively just the same.

“Pity we can’t figure out a way to eat the spikeweed ourselves.” Carson had only been half-joking.

One of the big changes that had taken place when they’d made a decision to settle independently in Agartha was Jennifer Keller’s announcement that she was returning to Earth. Carson, who’d admitted that as a clone, he’d never felt as though he could reconnect with Beckett’s family or that he even belonged on Earth, had been glad to take her place. Ronon’s expression had turned thunderous when asked about it, so John had let it go. Once they’d declared themselves an independent colony, the SGC had cut off contact with them and locked them out of dialing the Earth gate. Rodney swore they’d change their tune one day, but so far, they hadn’t.

“My people used to boil it for days to remove the spines,” Teyla had volunteered. “The distilled liquid has medicinal properties.”

Practically the first thing they’d done in establishing a colony on Agartha was invite the remnants of the Athosians to join them in their own colony on the mainland. Though they’d been wary at first (for which John couldn’t blame them, they’d come in for more than their fair share of heartache by virtue of knowing the expedition from Earth) the chance to set up a real society free from most threats had been too tempting for most to refuse. And John had to admit, the sturdy Athosians had just the skill at living off the land that his colony badly needed. The Agartha colony traded fairly with the Athosians for their crops and livestock raised, exchanging technology and medical assistance. There were times, however, when the Athosian knowledge of the flora and fauna provided medical knowledge to the expedition, instead of the other way around.

“I’d like to know more about that,” Parrish had replied, looking as interested as Hawkeye spotting one of the small ground squirrels that ran amok on the planet. “I’d like to coordinate with you and Dr. Beckett on that in a few weeks. But right now, our focus must be on removal.”

They had three bush-hoggers. Or at least, one real one and two makeshift ones. Radek and Rodney had worked to build replicas on the guidelines of the one they’d found in storage in the bowels of the city. Getting it up to the flight deck and into a jumper had been challenging, to say the least, and the remaining two had been built on site on the mainland. The science teams had been working like mad to finish them, particularly after one of the young foals was admitted to Dr. Abbott’s satellite clinic on the mainland for spikeweed toxicity. She’d had her hands full trying to treat the hallucinating, dehydrated foal while placating its distraught mother, and everyone had pitched in to finish the machine work.

“Do you foresee any resistance from the Pegasii?” Elizabeth had asked John, at the close of the last meeting. It was a good question.

“None so far.” He’d shrugged.

“That’s because they’re all _stoned_.” Rodney’s tone had said it all as far as he was concerned.

The day of the Operation Spikeweed Eradication dawned sunny and clear. The temperature was cool enough so that no one overheated, and yet it was warm enough that shortly after the work began, people began shedding layers and festooning the tree line with clothing.

Parrish was humming as he took his seat on the bush-hogger. The tune was familiar to John, but before he could place it, Parrish burst into song. 

_“Green Acres is the place to be!_  
 _Farm living is the life for me!_  
 _Land spreading out so far and wide…_  
 _Keep Manhattan, just give me the countryside!”_

Lorne roared with laughter. John smiled as he looked on. He’d been surprised and yet terribly pleased when Lorne had returned to Pegasus along with the other recruits from Earth. John had purposely left Lorne off his short list for the initial expedition that set out to locate the missing personnel onboard _Fortune’s_ sister ship _Destiny_. He felt that of all the people who’d come to Pegasus, Lorne actually had a promising career in the SGC, and John had hated to screw that up. It had completely taken him by surprise when Lorne and Parrish turned up as part of _Fortune’s_ recruitment run, but seeing them together made him realize that perhaps Lorne’s devotion to a military career was not as solid as he’d thought.

Especially when Lorne followed up with the next verse of the television theme song, singing in a high falsetto with a bad Hungarian accent.

_“New York is where I’d rather stay!_  
 _I get allergic smelling hay!_  
 _I just adore a Penthouse view…_  
 _Darling, I love you but give me Park Avenue!”_

The rest of the song was drowned out as the two men started their engines. John followed suit, idly checking to see where Rodney was located. He wondered if Rodney ever felt like the displaced socialite of the sit-com, and if he’d followed John to the wilds of Pegasus out of some misguided sense of affection. Parrish seemed to be in his element. John could see that he was still singing, though between the ear protectors and the noise of the machinery, John couldn’t hear the words. Lorne had a big grin on his face, and it made the normally serious man seemed younger somehow. Everyone seemed relaxed and happy these days, John thought. Like they’d all drunk from the fountain of youth or something.

When he spotted Rodney, the feeling that Rodney had sacrificed a lot to be here with him only intensified. Rodney was dressed in a heavy jacket with thick leather gloves, and was wearing a filtration mask over his face. He was the only one doing so. John sighed. He hadn’t come all this way to be a farmer himself. _What the fuck are we doing here?_ He had no real answer. They’d taken Atlantis away from him and he’d gone searching for another place that he could call home. His life now had distilled down to feeding his people and governing a city. A long way from being a soldier and following orders. That was certainly nothing he’d ever envisioned for himself when he’d sat in the park, flipping a coin to decide if he’d join the Pegasus expedition or not. 

The bush-hogging went slowly, but John had hopes that after a couple of hours of work, the weeds would be under control and he could get back to the things he should really be doing. Lorne had left him with a stack of reports that he needed to look over before the end of the month—some of the information within needed action taken before the winter set in. His list of tasks wasn’t limited to the administration of the city or feeding its population over the winter, either. There were things that needed repair, strategic contingency plans to be developed, drills to be held. He wasn’t going to make the mistakes the first expedition made. The recruiting teams had not only brought back personnel with Pegasus experience but people who were critical to sustaining a colony: engineers, mechanics, and farmers. With Elizabeth to run the day-to-day operations, John had turned his attention to exploring the city they lived in, and after all this time, they were still finding exciting discoveries.

He hated feeling as though there were other things, more important things, he should be doing right now. Still, they needed every available set of hands for the weeding, and what kind of leader would he be if _now_ he decided to get caught up on paperwork?

They soon found out that the rest of the day wasn’t going to go so smoothly. The bulk of the weeds were indeed lying flat as Parrish had predicted. The long runners meant they didn’t rake up easily. The weed-wacking crew got to work following the bush-hogging, but had a hard time chewing through the stemmy plants. They had to take their time cutting on an angle so close to the ground. Rodney and Radek were among that team, and the whine of the motors made conversation impossible. John followed behind with the raking crew. Once they’d finished a line, it was hard to tell that they’d done anything at all. They continued for several hours, with Torren helping Teyla load the hand carts with the collected brush so they could haul it to the burn pit. The smell of smoke was all around them, taking John back to his days of raking leaves at his family home as a young boy.

Ronon’s teams joined them when they’d finished burning the other fields. 

“There’s gotta be a better way,” Ronon said, when they stopped to eat lunch. Elizabeth had sent a jumper from the city with the Pegasus equivalent of pizza, which could be folded easily and eaten one-handed, while still standing up.

“If you can think of something, be my guest.” Rodney pulled off his gloves to inspect his hands. They were red and blotchy. “This crap goes through leather! How can the Pegasii be so stupid as to eat this shit? Oh god, I’m still vibrating. I feel as though I’m still holding a weed-wacker.” He held out his hand and demonstrated the fine tremor.

John shrugged. “Storm Dancer says they can’t help it. Maybe you should switch off and let someone else weed-wack for a while anyway.” He frowned at Rodney’s early reactivity. If his history was anything to go by, Rodney would only get worse with continued exposure to the spikeweed.

Regardless if Rodney was happy or not on Agartha, he certainly looked much better than he’d done at the end of their tenure in Atlantis. Having a base of operations on a planet that could hide between dimensions took a lot of the pressure off him in terms of defending the city. The lack of readily available processed food and the need to grow almost everything they consumed had helped Rodney become fitter, too. He looked good, damned good.

Except for the fact that his neck was turning red in patches as well. 

Rodney blinked rapidly several times and rubbed at one eye with the back of his wrist.

“Don’t do that,” John ordered. “You don’t want that stuff in your eyes.”

“I can’t help it, I itch. Damn it!” Rodney took off his jacket and scratched furiously at his arm. He rolled up the sleeve to reveal a series of small red welts. 

Carson put down his pizza slice with a sigh. “Let me see. Ah, that’s no good.” He tsked as he examined Rodney’s arm. “You’re definitely having a contact reaction to the spikeweed here. Come on, let’s get you started on some antihistamines and some cortisone cream.”

“Wait, doesn’t an allergic reaction mean I shouldn’t expose myself to any more spikeweed? What kind of doctor are you, anyway?”

“Are you telling me you want me to write you a note getting you out of any further weed-wacking, Rodney?” The sarcasm in Carson’s voice made him roll his R’s even more than usual.

“I don’t think the weed-wacking is working anyway.” Parrish looked unhappy, as though he was afraid John was going to chew him out. “I’m sorry, but I think we’re going to have to pull it by hand.”

“I disagree. The weed-wacking is speeding things along. We’re going to get there much faster using equipment than doing this by hand.” Rodney scowled as he scratched at the side of his neck.

John laughed, causing Rodney to shoot him a piercing glance. “What?”

“Never mind.” John said, even as Parrish snorted and choked on his drink.

“I fail to see what is so funny about… oh.” Rodney turned bright red, the rest of his face and neck matching the hives. “Leave it to you to come up with a, um, sexual connotation on things. Really, John, there are _children_ present.”

Everyone looked at Torren, who was sitting beside Teyla.

“Hawkie ate pizza,” he said brightly, indicating the empty spot where Carson’s pizza slice had rested.

The dog in question was chewing with careful deliberation, his mouth obviously full.

“Hawkeye!” Sarah scolded. “What have you got in your mouth?” 

John could tell by the way she spoke that this was a sort of warning phrase that she’d used in the past, much as when she’d say, “That’s not safe!’ when the dog had picked up something from the ground.

The Shepherd swallowed quickly and opened his mouth, tongue lolling.

“Nuffin,” Ronon said, clearly pretending to be the dog.

Amidst the laughter, apologies, and putting the rest of the food out of reach of an animal whose head was at table height, Carson led Rodney away for treatment.

“I think you’re underestimating the seriousness of this reaction, Carson.” Rodney’s whine carried back to the others. “I’m pretty sure I need a full decontamination, you know, a hot shower, something to scrub all these irritating little spines off my skin…what if I start to have trouble breathing?"

Carson dragged Rodney by the sleeve without saying a word.

The sun was setting when John finally called it a day. The combination of the low-lying clouds and the smoke-filled air made for a spectacular sunset. The sky was awash with pink and raspberry bands of color, and the sun itself bathed the fields in a golden light as it set. Overhead, a couple of young Pegasii spiraled and dove in flight. 

“We’re not going to finish today. We’ve been at it since 0800. I say let’s pack it in and get some rest. Come back out tomorrow and clear the rest of it.”

Someone groaned—probably Rodney, who’d been allowed (or as he put it, forced) to come back to work as long has he didn’t directly touch the weeds. Everyone stopped what he or she was doing and straightened stiffly. Teyla leaned on her rake and stretched out her shoulders. John was pleased that despite the unaccustomed work, he really was no worse for the day’s activities. All this country living must be good for them. Rodney set down the handles of the wheelbarrow he’d been trundling along, winced, and flexed his fingers repeatedly.

“Oh god,” he said. “Somewhere there’s a hot shower, a bottle of ibuprofen, a cold beer and a sandwich the size of my foot with my name on it. Or, at least, there’d better be.” He finished on a dark, threatening note.

John leaned in close behind him as they were putting away the rakes. “Two words,” he said, his lips just brushing Rodney’s ear. “Hot. Tub.”

Rodney’s look of pleased anticipation kind of made the whole day worth it.

****

After they’d eaten dinner and were settled onboard _Fortune_ in the cabin hologram program for the evening, Rodney remarked that it was a sign they were getting old when soaking in the hot tub was the actual goal instead of having sex in it.

“Who says it has to be mutually exclusive?” John asked, cruising across from his side of the tub to prove his point.

Rodney flapped a hand in his direction, ignoring John’s crocodile-like approach through the water. “No, seriously, I’m beat. I’m all groggy from the antihistamines, too. The last thing on my mind is—” He broke off with a yelp when John submerged beneath the foaming surface and touched Rodney on the thigh.

 _Too tired for sex, my ass_. 

Rodney obligingly spread his legs for John to push between them, arching back when John took hold of Rodney’s soft cock in his mouth. Rodney’s legs floated up as he sank down the side of the hot tub. John held on to them as he worked his mouth up and down Rodney’s cock, smiling as he felt it harden in appreciation of his efforts. Rodney’s hands, his marvelous hands, were in John’s hair, exploring the side of his face with a gentle touch. John scarcely had time for more than a couple of passes up and down Rodney’s shaft before the need for oxygen demanded he resurface, however. He exploded out of the water, tossing his head back to shake the water out of his eyes. His abrupt movement caused Rodney to lose his place on the side of the tub. Rodney went underneath the surface only to come up flailing.

John swarmed over Rodney, pinning him up against the tub wall. With his arms underneath Rodney’s, there was no danger of Rodney sinking again. Rodney was furious at the ducking, however. “Great! Now we’re both soaking wet. I’ll have you know that the slicked back wet look does nothing for you. Not to mention, there is no sane way to have sex in a hot tub without risking drowning.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” John opened a compartment in the wall of the tub and took out a small tube of lube. “Silicon based,” he said, waggling the tube with a smile.

Rodney gaped at him. “Where did you get that? How did you—who programmed the changes to the holodeck? That compartment wasn’t there before!”

“Are you complaining?” John nudged aside Rodney’s knees again, and lifted Rodney’s legs one by one and placed them on his shoulders. Casually, oh so casually, he opened the tube and squirted out some slick into his hand.

Rodney’s eyes went dark when John’s fingers brushed up against him. Holding on to the side of the tub with a death grip, he briefly licked his lips, only to let his mouth drop open in a wordless shudder of pleasure at John’s touch. Tipping his head back, he arched once again as John fingered him, and John felt the ache deep in his cock as it lifted in sympathy. With Rodney’s heels pressing against him, drawing him in closer, it was no hardship to slither his way up Rodney’s body to press a hot, wet kiss to that open mouth. Steam rose all around them as John rubbed himself against Rodney, both of them reveling in the contact. Rodney’s cock thrust up between them, begging for attention while John circled Rodney’s hole. The fierce clench of Rodney’s ass around his finger made John’s cock nudge demandingly into the action, seeking contact as well. Rodney reached between them for John’s cock, but John broke off the kiss and slid down his body, his middle finger buried deep in Rodney’s ass and stroking upward as John took a deep breath and went under the surface again.

This time he guided Rodney’s cock, engorged and as hot as the surrounding water, into his mouth. Pumping up and down over the end of Rodney’s dick with the same rhythm he used with his hand, he was getting into it when an involuntary movement from Rodney’s leg clocked him in the head. He let Rodney’s cock slip from his mouth with an unexpected release of air. Flailing backward, he involuntarily inhaled. Rodney pulled him up, choking and sputtering.

“This is ridiculous.” Rodney was either very angry or very turned on. Either way, Rodney in Imperious Mode was pretty hot, so John was hoping for turned on. When Rodney turned and presented his ass, gripping the sides of the hot tub as he bent over, John had his answer.

“Well?” Rodney glared over his shoulder. “You started this. Are you going to fuck me or what?” He twitched his ass from side to side. It was, and always would be, a magnificent ass. Something about that thought pricked John’s awareness, and suggested there was something about that notion he should pay attention to. Not now, though. Later. 

Rodney’s expression was decidedly impatient. “Well?”

“With an invitation like that—”

“That will not last forever. And I swear to you, if I hear the words ‘pushy bottom’ coming out of your mouth—” Rodney broke off his last complaint to thrust his ass back and moan as John entered him.

There were worse ways to end a long day.

Sometime later, when they were drowsing on the sofa in front of the fire, the book having fallen from Rodney’s hand and a light snore emanating from him, a niggling thought lit into John’s consciousness, causing him to open his eyes.

How many times had he laid like this, snuggled up against Rodney, the two of them wearing old sweaters and jeans, their feet warming at the fire in the hearth? First in the real cabin, and then in the holographic one Rodney had created for them on board Fortune. For how many years now? John tried to recall how long it had actually been, but everything was warm and comfortable and the day’s work—and play—had been hard. He closed his eyes and thought no more about it.

****

Later, after they’d roused enough to make dinner, they were sitting on the couch together, Rodney with his legs draped over John’s lap, when someone knocked at the door.

“Seriously?” Rodney growled as he sat up. He fished for his slippers from under the couch. “This had better be a goddamned fucking emergency.”

John had to agree, but hoped it wasn’t. It had been a long day and he was feeling a little creaky.

He opened the door to find Ronon and Sarah standing there. Ronon had a large leather tube in one hand, the kind used to carry papers. He looked embarrassed, an expression John seldom saw from him. Sarah looked like she was about to burst with excitement. Hawkeye was with them, and his ears melted into a friendly greeting when he recognized John. He started to push his way into the cabin so John grabbed him by the collar.

“Puffin’s in here somewhere.”

“H is pretty good with cats. But I can leave him outside if you prefer.”

John tried not to sigh out loud and released the dog’s collar. “It’s not H I’m worried about.” The cat had taken on an alien that had stowed onboard _Fortune_ back before they’d found Agartha—and the alien didn’t survive the encounter. In all the time they’d been in Agartha, it had just been easier to keep the two animals apart. It would probably be better if the dog stayed outside. He stepped back to let Ronon and Sarah inside the cabin.

Sarah put H on a down-stay on the porch. The dog gave a heavy sigh as he flopped down on the worn wooden surface. He looked forlorn when John went to shut the door, and whined hopefully as everyone went inside. 

“Not this time, buddy.” John felt bad shutting the dog out. The stinker really knew how to work the guilt factor.

“So, what’s the big emergency?” Rodney asked, looking distinctly put out. “Long-range scanners indicate an attack force has entered the solar system? There’s been a catastrophic breakdown in the power grid? Radiation is leaking from one of the ZPMs? Phineas and Ferb are making a title sequence again?”

“Phineas and Ferb?” Sarah questioned.

“Cartoon.” John was succinct. 

“Two crazy kids who build outlandish machines and have wild adventures in their backyard. Their sister’s mission in life is to rat them out to their parents, only something always happens to destroy the evidence before she can tattle on them.” Rodney was smug with the details, and something in the way he glanced at John glittered with meaning meant only for him. Which was cool. “The set-up for each episode is laid out in the title sequence while the credits are playing.”

Without a word, Ronon turned to go. Sarah planted herself between him and the door, and spun him around to face John and Rodney again. Okay, ‘spun’ might have been stretching it a bit. It was more like turning an elephant in stages, with lots of tugging and pushing.

“Show them.” She was firm. “Ronon’s been working on this for weeks,” she added in a bright, expectant tone. 

John was curious now. “What is it?” he asked, as Ronon pulled the large sheets of parchment out of the leather carrying case.

“You used paper?” Rodney sounded scornful. John quietly stepped on his foot. Rodney had the self-preservation not to acknowledge that John had done that. Years of living in Pegasus had taught him at least _that_ much.

“Wait until you see.” Sarah’s eyes were alight with the anticipation of sharing something delightful.

Ronon unrolled the parchment and laid it out on the kitchen table, using the salt and pepper shakers to hold it open. It was a map of the city—hand-drawn and containing small images at various points within the city. Ronon’s neat, precise handwriting filled the margins with notes that were written in Satedean. 

“Hey! That’s me!” Rodney leaned in and pointed with obvious delight.

It was. Ronon had drawn a picture of Rodney in miniature, miming an explosion or something equally dramatic with his hands in front of a group of children listening with avid interest on their faces. There were children in classrooms all over the city,  
on field trips, being lectured by various members of the expedition. All while flying Pegasii soared overhead. The artwork was superb—and fascinating. 

There was John, teaching a group of children how to ride a Pegasus. Teyla leading a class in Bantos rods. Carson showing a team of adults something in the infirmary. Elizabeth reading from a large book.

As John stared at the drawings, marveling at the painstaking rendition Ronon had created there, Sarah went on to explain Ronon’s idea, that Agartha could become a center of learning within Pegasus, by invitation only, starting with scientists and leaders from the known trading worlds, but eventually becoming a sort of Hogwarts; a place where the future of Pegasus could come together to learn and to share their knowledge with others.

“You’ve mentioned this once or twice before.” John knew this must be really important to Ronon for him to go to all this effort.

“Yep.” Ronon wasn’t going to argue his case further. John could see the quiet need to do this burning within Ronon, however, and somehow it sparked the same need in him.

Rodney ran his hands lightly over the parchment, careful not to smudge the drawings. “This is fantastic,” he breathed. He looked up at John sharply. “We must do this.”

John reached out and squeezed Rodney’s shoulder briefly. “May I keep these for a few days?” John indicated the drawings.

Ronon shrugged and re-rolled them. John could see that he was pleased, however, as he tucked them back into the case.

“Right, right.” Rodney began hustling Ronon and Sarah out of the cabin. “Go now, talk to the department heads, come up with a viable plan. Briefing one week from tomorrow. Bye now!”

Sarah was laughing as Rodney pushed the two of them out the door.

“So,” Rodney said speculatively, once the door was closed. “Do you think he’s doing her? There’s a serious age difference there.”

“Ask. Next time you see him,” said John.

Rodney leaned with his hands behind his back on the door and grinned, shaking his head. “I’m not an idiot with a death-wish. And oh, by the way, eeew.”

John Gibbs-lapped him on the back of the head. This caused Rodney to bat at his hand ineffectually, until they were smacking at each other like two of the Three Stooges. 

“Oh, tell me you didn’t think the same thing! Seriously!” Rodney landed a good punch to John’s arm and danced out of his reach. “The age gap has got to be what—twenty years?”

John pinned Rodney against the door, laughing as he held Rodney’s hands back. “You know what they say, it’s not the age, it’s the mileage that counts.” He kissed Rodney by way of indicating not only was the discussion over, but that John had won. He could tell Rodney was smiling beneath John’s lips, feeling the curve of Rodney’s mouth against his skin.

That evening, with the moonlight reflecting off the snow-covered fields around the cabin, filling the bedroom with a cold, white light, John lay awake with one arm lying across Rodney’s sleeping form, very much aware of how lucky he was. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve this life. The answer was probably luck of the draw. Roll of the dice. He recalled the faces of the people he’d lost, people he’d been responsible for, friends. It didn’t seem right somehow that he and Rodney had made it this far, to this point, when so many of their friends and colleagues had not. He thought of the people they’d chosen to leave behind, when once again, they’d answered a call to take a one-way ticket back to Pegasus. 

That it hadn’t been had been a fatal trip was solely due to another stroke of luck as well—namely Elizabeth’s consciousness, stored in Replicator form, finding and merging with the AI of the Ancient ship _Fortune_. John’s mini-expedition (as part of the team sent to try and rescue the people trapped on _Destiny_ ) had been dead in the water in a single jumper that was out of fuel when _Fortune_ had shown up off their bow. It humbled him even now to know that Elizabeth had been looking for them, had known in her gut that he and his team in particular, would return to Pegasus somehow.

Since then, they’d discovered Agartha, and had returned back to Earth to recruit enough people to form a real colony. The SGC had initially been excited about the discovery of another city just like Atlantis, but relations had grown cool when John’s expedition declared itself an independent colony. It had been hard, saying goodbye to friends and family, knowing they’d probably never see each other again, but everyone who was here now wanted to be here. And as Ronon had pointed out, “You guys all left the first time without looking back, so why’s it any harder now?”

Ronon was right. Still, never in a million years did John think he’d one day end up running a colony and planting tormack, for pity’s sake.

Rodney began snoring. John waited to see if he’d stop, and when he didn’t, gave him a nudge. Rodney rolled onto his side, pulling John by the arm with him as though John were his favorite blanket. Taking the hint, John smiled and closed his eyes.

 

****

 

“I can’t believe we’re going to do this all day again,” Rodney complained as they stepped out of the jumper. The sun was just starting to melt the frost on the ground. John could see the vapor of Rodney’s breath as he spoke. He was wearing the orange fleece jacket that he’d been wearing the day that they’d first met, and like a flashback from a movie, John remembered Rodney asking him to picture where he was in the universe. Rodney had seemed to be the only bright spot of color in a world of white, blue, and grey there in the Antarctica base. These days Rodney looked very much like the reasonably trim and fit scientist he had been in those early days of the expedition, before they’d discovered what they were up against in Pegasus, and the long hours and bad diet had affected his health. On some level, that made John feel good, as though Rodney had made the right decision to come back here with him.

“Leave your jacket in the jumper,” John suggested.

“What? No, it’s cold out here.” Rodney hunched into his jacket and rubbed one sleeve with a gloved hand.

“You’ll warm up soon and the spikeweed will stick to the jacket. You’ll never get all the burrs out.”

“Oh my god, you’re right.” Rodney hastily removed his jacket and took it back inside the jumper. John waited patiently for Rodney to rejoin him. When he finally came out, Rodney was wearing a heavy khaki shirt over top of his regular one, presumably to protect his arms. Together, with Rodney grumbling the entire way, they joined the others in the field, who had already started.

In some ways, it was easier this time around. Despite aching muscles and stiff, cold fingers, there was a rhythm and a pattern to what they were doing now. Most people, with the exception of Rodney, took the same tasks they did the day before, only this time; the absence of the weed-wacking racket was a welcome relief. The patches of weed were further apart now, and there was very little conversation as the expedition spread out to tackle it.

John gave up on the hoeing. The strain on his back had proven too much and the long strands of weed were too hard to rake up. Frustrated, he got down on his hands and knees and pulled the weeds by hand. Wrapping his fingers around a long stalk, he tugged until the whole thing came up, roots and all. He sat back on his heels when the soil finally released its hold on the plant; a small clod of dirt flew up and hit him in the face. There was something satisfying about seeing the entire plant in his fist, and he tossed it down in front of him to reach for the next.

Once he’d cleared the small area around him, he moved over, leaving behind a pile of pulled weeds for the cleanup crew to gather. He repeated the cycle over and over. Clear the small patch of ground within his reach. Stand up. Shake out his hands. Move two feet over. It was easier than trying to rake them out of the ground. It felt sustainable, an action he could do for hours.

And that’s what he did. His world narrowed down to the smell of the moist dirt beneath him, the feel of the prickly weeds biting in through his clothing where he knelt. The sun on his back, warming him slowly through his shirt. The weed in front of him, needing to be pulled. His mind emptied. He could have thought about anything. His former life on Earth. His life here in Agartha. His obligations here in the city and to his people. Rodney. Ronon’s plan to give back to the galaxy.

He could have thought about all those things but he didn’t. There was nothing but him and the weeds. He learned which ones he could pull up easily and which ones he’d have to put his back into the effort. He came across other plants; weeds he did not recognize, but presumed should go just the same. He became aware that his BDUs were soaking through with contact from the damp soil and that the little spines were working their way under his skin to make him itch. None of it mattered though. In a way, it was peaceful. Almost enjoyable. He could see why gardening had its appeal. He thought of the time he’d spent with Teer’s people and knew this was as close as he’d come to meditation since then.

Behind the emptiness, he could feel the thrumming approval of the city, and the Pegasii themselves. It was like surfing—just him, the sand, the board, and the waves. Or flying on Storm Dancer when Pegasus and rider were one with the wind and the skies.

Hawkeye wandered over to see him, shoving his long nose into John’s face as he knelt on the ground. John paused to pet him; the big dog rested his head on John’s bent knee with a happy sigh.

Sarah came by with a cart to collect the pile of weeds nearest to him. 

“How old is H now?” he asked, not certain why he did so.

“Old enough to know better,” Sarah said with a laugh. “My standard answer. What’s he done now?” The dog had left John at her approach and had curled his body around her legs, tail wagging happily.

“Nothing. Just wondered that’s all.”

She frowned. “Well, he was four when we joined the expedition in Atlantis. What year was that? I don’t remember. 2009? 2010? How long have we been in Agartha now?”

“I’m not sure. We were out in space a long time before we found the city. It seems like you guys have only been here a few months, but obviously, it’s been longer than that.”

Hawkeye spotted Torren trying to move a big stick and bolted off after the small child.

“Oh dear, he’s going to help.” Sarah hurried off to intervene. Torren was laughing as Hawkeye grabbed the other end of the dead branch and the two of them started dragging it to the side of the field. The branch was more like a piece of tree, and Hawkeye took hold of one end in his mouth, leaning back into his haunches and tugging hard. John was impressed as the muscles rippled under the shining black and tan coat. The dog’s enthusiasm for dragging the branch, however, almost bowled Torren over, and once they got the branch out of the field, the dog was reluctant to leave it alone, attempting to bring it back again. 

John smiled as he went back to work. He ignored the little voice in his head that said something wasn’t quite right. Everything was right. After all, they were on Agartha. 

When afternoon light heralded the onset of dusk, John straightened and looked out on the field with satisfaction. This time he could clearly see the where they had worked to pull up the remaining weeds. The burned fields could be tilled over. The fields they’d worked on today were sufficiently cleared for the winter. Parrish and his team would come up with a management plan for next spring. Even though John ached in places he’d never felt before, there was something like pride when he examined their handiwork.

“I get to eat whatever I want for dinner tonight,” Rodney declared when the first team of workers crowded back into the jumper for the flight back to the city. The sun was setting along the horizon as they approached, bathing the city in a red light that was breathtaking on its shimmering towers.

“I second that,” Radek agreed wearily.

Back at their quarters, Rodney paused only long enough to wash his hands. “You coming?” he asked when it became apparent that John was taking his time. “Because starving man here.” Rodney pointed at himself and then in the direction of the mess hall.

John crossed over to Rodney and kissed him thoroughly. “You go on. I’ll catch up.”

Rodney looked faintly puzzled as he left, but the call of food was too strong to make him linger with questions.

John took his time washing up, soaping up his itchy arms, and cleaning the dirt out from under his nails. He dried his hands and arms thoroughly and re-hung the towel before exiting the bathroom.

Fortune was waiting for him when he came out.

She still looked like the same, fresh-faced young woman whose form she’d taken that first time she’d appeared to John and the others that night in the cabin hologram, the night Rodney had surprised John with a party. Of course, her human form was simply another hologram; there was no reason to expect that she would age. Rodney had always speculated there had been a certain amount of calculation on her part in choosing dark hair and hazel eyes. Even Ronon had noticed she looked enough like John to be family. John had found it creepy at first, and then irritating, as though he was stupid enough to be suckered into trusting her based on a family resemblance. But over time, Fortune had proven herself to be an expedition member as much as any of the original staff. She was…family.

“Forgive my rudeness for not knocking.”

“We both know that’s a mere formality, Tuny.” John crossed his arms and waited.

She smiled at the use of his nickname for her. “True, but it has been my observation that your people prefer these formalities. When I am in human form, I am expected to behave as humans do. I gathered you wanted to see me in private, however?” She ended on a questioning note, and John smiled back at her continuance of the role-playing.

The smile faded when he thought about why he wanted to speak with her alone. He cut to the chase. “How long have we been here in Agartha?”

“Fourteen years, six months, twenty-eight days, twelve hours—“

John was blown away. That long. He knew it had been a while, but not _that_ long. “Whoa. It can’t have been that long. I mean—” He broke off. Tuny could hardly be wrong about something like this, and deep in his heart, he knew she wasn’t. But it was just so far-fetched…and yet they’d seen stranger things in Pegasus. Still… “What’s the average life span of a German Shepherd?”

Tuny was calm. “Twelve years.”

Impossible. Hawkeye shouldn’t be the picture of health and vitality that he was. But then stranger things have happened in Pegasus. “So, what, we are in a time bubble or something? Time is passing, because Torren has gotten bigger.”

“That is correct. I have been studying this phenomenon, and I believe there is a correlation between the time dampening field on this world and the ability of the Pegasii to hide this planet in other dimensions. I have also observed that Torren and the other children seem to be growing and maturing at a different rate than the rest of you are aging.”

“You didn’t think to mention this?” John could hear the sarcastic edge to his drawl and wondered what the AI made of it.

Tuny blinked, looking faintly confused. “I presumed you were aware of it. After all, those with the ATA gene can communicate with the Pegasii. They do not communicate with me. I was also under the impression that delayed aging would be a good thing. Am I incorrect?”

“No, you’re right, it’s just…well, it’s not natural. And a bit unexpected, that’s all.”

Tuny smiled. “Ah. I know how the unexpected is often disturbing to you humans. Will that be all?”

John let her go. She’d given him plenty to think about.

****

“You’re awfully quiet.” Rodney spoke long after John had assumed he was asleep. They were back in their quarters within the city, opting to stay there since Operation Spikeweed was over and both of them had to get back to their regular duties in the morning.

“Got a lot on my mind.”

Rodney rolled over and propped his head on his elbow to look down at John where he lay on his back facing the ceiling.

“Good stuff? Bad stuff? Boring administrative stuff that I don’t really want to know anything about stuff?”

John tucked one arm behind his head. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe time here isn’t quite normal?”

Rodney got very still. “What do you mean?”

John instantly regretted opening his mouth. He shouldn’t have said anything at all, leastwise, not like this. “I just, well, think things are moving a bit slowly, that’s all. You know, ever since we got to Agartha. I’m thinking we’re in a time bubble or something.”

Rodney let out his breath in a whoosh of relief. “No, that never dawned on me. Is that what’s been worrying you lately? Jeez, for someone with so much hair, you obsess over some deep, metaphysical questions.”

“You don’t think it’s the slightest bit odd that I still have so much hair?”

“Bite your tongue!” Rodney rolled to clap one hand over John’s mouth, pinning him to the mattress, his blue eyes wide with mock horror. “We don’t take the state of The Hair in vain.”

It shouldn’t have felt so hot to be manhandled by Rodney, but it did. It still did. Even after all these years. John couldn’t resist. He licked Rodney’s palm.

“Eeeew!” Rodney pulled his hand back, wrinkling his nose and wiping his hand dramatically on John’s T-shirt.

John’s smile was short-lived. “I’m serious. I’ve been talking with Tuny. Time isn’t passing normally for us here. How long do you think we’ve been here in Agartha?”

Rodney leaned on his elbow again, frowning. “I don’t know? Three, maybe four years?”

“Try fourteen.”

“ _What_? No, no, that’s impossible. I distinctly remember when we discovered this world like it was yesterday. It wasn’t that long ago.”

John turned so that he could look at Rodney squarely. “How many harvests can you remember?”

Rodney blinked, opened and shut his mouth a few times, fingers flashing as he silently counted up the years. His jaw dropped when the full impact of what John was saying reached him. “But Torren—”

“Is aging at a different rate than the rest of us. Come on, McKay. Do you really feel like sixty-year-old man?”

Rodney punched him in the shoulder hard enough to hurt a little. “Shut the fuck up.” He gawped at John, who knew exactly how he felt. He narrowed his eyes, already thinking of the science behind the facts. “Exactly how does that work?”

John was forced to shrug. “I don’t know. I’m guessing it has to do with the Pegasii.”

“But that means everyone else we know is continuing to age at a normal rate.” Rodney, as usual, cut to the most important part of the entire equation. “Everyone back at the SGC, back on Earth... Sam. Colonel O’Neill. Jeannie.”

 _Dave and his family_. John recognized the shock Rodney was feeling. “I know.” His voice was quiet.

“But Torren is aging at a different rate from us—he and the other kids. And so are the foals, I mean, the Pegasii have offspring every year, right? They seem to be growing up in a normal fashion. Same with Torren. He gets bigger every year, and with time, one hopes he will manage normal sentence structure.”

“Yeah, I don’t get it, either.” John hated not having any answers for Rodney. Hell, he hated not having answers for himself. “But the way I see it, Torren and the others growing up, just a helluva lot more slowly than they should.”

“Whereas the rest of us aren’t aging at all. Not appreciably, at any rate. What are you going to do?” Rodney’s voice was uncertain, and John vowed that one way or another, he’d get to the bottom of this.

“I guess I go talk to the Pegasii,” he said.

“You know what this means, right?” Rodney was unusually subdued.

John didn’t have a clue. “No, what?”

Rodney gave him The Look normally reserved for minions of the lowest order of intelligence. “It means we can’t build Ronon’s school. Someone’s bound to notice if they send their kid to school here that they aren’t aging as fast as everyone else on their home planet. Before you know it, Agartha will be known as the new Shangri La.”

“You once told me that Shangri La was one of the other names for Agartha.”

“Yes, yes, but that was a myth, a legend!”

“Like the legend of Atlantis?”

“Okay, lost city under the sea, I get it. And like the legend of Camelot, too, the Ancients had a flare for disguising themselves by creating folklore. But this? This could be a total disaster. People will flock here in the hopes of slowed aging. Other parties will be more aggressive about it—trying to take the planet by force. We’re doomed.”

“Only if we let anyone else know about it.”

“Yeah.” Rodney unexpectedly laid his head on John’s chest. John rested his hand on the back of Rodney’s neck, savoring the quiet connection between them. He knew Rodney was listening to his heartbeat, and the very knowledge of that fact made him relax and breathe more slowly. After a long pause, Rodney said, “I was just kind of looking forward to growing old with you.”

“Yeah, me too.” John said. “It will probably still happen, though. Just slower.”

“I can live with that.” Rodney smoothed his hand over John’s ribcage, slowly moving it back and forth across his skin. Puffin padded her way up from the foot of the bed, purring loudly as she settled herself next to Rodney’s hip.

John fell asleep thinking he could live with that, too. But he had a feeling it wasn’t going to be that simple.

****

 _John Sheppard_.

He woke immediately at the sound of someone calling his name. A lifetime in the military had trained him to wake quietly, without showing confusion, no matter how confused he might actually be. He was aware he’d been dreaming, and that his dreams were more disjointed and nonsensical than usual, but he couldn’t recall them, not even on regaining full awareness. 

_John Sheppard_.

He made a rapid assessment of his surroundings. He was lying next to Rodney in the rooms they shared within the city. The quarters they’d taken on Agartha were larger than anything they’d been assigned separately on Atlantis. Having been hidden by the Pegasii instead of under the sea, the city was in excellent condition for the most part. Once they’d declared independence, John and Rodney had dispensed with the fiction that they weren’t seeing each other and had taken spacious quarters overlooking the east pier. John had wanted rooms with a view of the south pier, so he could see the Pegasii coming and going, but Rodney, uncharacteristically, had asked for quarters that faced the rising sun. It was an oddly romantic gesture for someone who rarely saw dawn unless he’d been up all night the evening before, but John had given in. He’d enjoyed seeing the first streaks of rosy light break across the horizon when he’d gotten up for his morning runs with Ronon.

It was still night now, however. Late enough that the two of the three moons were high in the sky, casting a thin, cold light into the room through the closed balcony doors. The third moon, larger and with an orange cast, had already moved out of view. Without illuminating his watch to see what time it was, John knew that it was probably between 0100 and 0200. Rodney made a snuffling noise and rolled on his side, tucking the blankets around him further as John eased out of bed. Silently, he pulled on his favorite black jacket over his t-shirt and sweat pants. He paused briefly, deciding whether to take the time to put on boots, but whatever had awoken him was waiting for him, he could feel it. He snatched up his ear piece and tucked it into place. With a final, longing look at the warm bed he’d just left, he padded silently through their quarters and out into the corridor. 

The lighting was dim, half-strength, the way it always was on the night cycle. John walked along the curving hallway, aware as always, of the differences between Agartha and Atlantis. Where Atlantis had been all blues and grays, Agartha was mostly greens and browns, with the occasional bright orange. Instead of oddly placed pillars of brightly lit bubbling water, Agartha had giant terrariums, self-contained, self-sustaining ecosystems in microcosm, complete with flora and fauna. The tiny deer-like creatures were his favorites. No bigger than the palm of his hand, they would occasionally creep out of the dense foliage within the terrariums. It felt like an honor just to see them.

There’d been concern at first, about the potential biohazards they might pose, as well as the inexplicable survival of such systems all these millennia, but in the end, they’d been deemed safe. John had never gotten a good explanation as to why they still thrived, but after his talk with Tuny, he was starting to get a good idea.

He kept walking. He skirted the Gateroom, where the night shift would be working, and he ducked behind one of the terrestrial pillars when the evening patrol went past. He didn’t want to answer any questions at the moment, or have to talk someone out of joining him. Whatever this was driving him forward, it was for John alone. Instinctively, he went down to the hologram room, where in Atlantis, recorded messages had been left for the next explorer to walk those halls. It was one of the first places they’d checked out on landing in Agartha, but no message explaining the city’s existence or why it had been abandoned had been found. The city had been astonishingly well-preserved, as though the inhabitants had just stepped out to get the mail, rather than having left it millennia before. All of that was now starting to make sense, however.

When John entered into the room, the light over the empty podium came on. Warily, he waited in the shadows near the door. The Ancients had a nasty way of leaving behind technology that did all sort of nasty things to the unsuspecting, and for the first time, John thought perhaps it would have been a good idea to have some back up. 

Still he waited. When nothing happened for a full five minutes, he spoke to the room. “Okay, you woke me up from a perfectly sound sleep and called me down here. What do you want?”

The door behind him closed. John started for it, cursing vehemently and mentally kicking himself for having become too damned complacent in the last decade or so, but came to a halt when the door refused to budge. He tapped his earpiece and got dead silence. As he expected, he was cut off from the city’s network, from Tuny, from Elizabeth. With a sigh, he turned back to face the light. Obviously, he was supposed to step into it. Reluctantly he made his way toward it, realizing he didn’t even have anything with which to leave Rodney a note goodbye, should this turn out to be a really bad idea. Not that he’d know what to say in such a note, but still, he’d have liked the chance to say something. Even if it was only ‘So long, Rodney’.

The puddle of light was warm when he moved into it, and it cloaked him like the ugly black and white sweater Rodney would bundle him into at the cabin when he complained of the cold. He sensed the slight manipulation of his emotions, the imbuement of comfort within the beam, and he hardened his heart to whatever it wanted from him. It felt good, though, and it was hard not to sigh into its embrace, like turning your face to the sun on chilly day. It tingled a little bit as well, as though scanning him or something. In his mind, he could hear Rodney saying snarkily, “Well, it’s not like you wanted kids anyway” and the thought made him snort just a little. 

_John Sheppard. You are here_.

“Yeah, well, that’s what you wanted, right?”

The light got a little warmer, as though tickled by his response.

 _More than you could ever know, John Sheppard. We waited in the spaces between dark and light, hoping others would come. Many years passed and there was no one. We missed the sounds of people within our walls_.

Holy crap. He’d often felt like he’d had a connection with Atlantis, but never in a million years did he imagine he could communicate with the city itself. But they’d only had a short time with Atlantis, relatively speaking. Maybe if they’d had longer—he shoved that thought away. Atlantis was lost to them, as lost as any of the members of the expedition that had died during their tenure there. That’s the way it felt to him sometimes, that Atlantis was dead. She was, too, cannibalized by SGC when they declassified the program, and all because he’d brought her to Earth in order to save it. It was his fault Atlantis was practically a theme-park now. Even though they’d saved the world, he couldn’t forgive himself for not rescuing the city he loved so much from his own people.

“Are you the city talking to me—Agartha?”

_We are known by many names. We are Agartha. We are Agharti. We are Shambhala. We are Shangi-La._

“Well, that explains a lot.”

_We are the lost city between worlds. The creatures you call Pegasii transport us between dimensions and keep us safe._

“Nice of them to do that.”

The light brightened and dimmed, as though laughing.

_You discovered our true nature. We felt we must explain._

“Be my guest.” John realized the drawl was very pronounced. It occurred to him that if he wasn’t careful, someone would recognize that when he turned up the smart-ass a notch, it was as much of a tell as any nervous tick during a game of high-stakes poker.

 _We are meant to serve and be useful. It has given us great pleasure to have your people among us. We are needed. We provide shelter. But your lives are so frail, so short_.

“Go on,” John said, when the city fell silent.

_We must protect the First Ones._

“And they would be…?”

He could swear the city seemed confused when it spoke next. 

_You are the First Ones. The Ones who woke us. Who brought us back to life. The Ones who live here. As long as you are here, we will protect you._

“Protect us how?” John was getting a bad feeling about this.

 _We repair you on the cellular level_. This time, John could swear the city’s tone implied this should be obvious.

“You keep us from aging.” 

_That would be one interpretation of it, yes._

So it was selective then. “Who are the first ones, exactly?”

 _You and the others who came on the ship called_ Fortune.

“But our people have had kids. You know, children—and they’re growing. Maybe not as fast as the rest of us…” he trailed off.

_Your numbers are few. Some of you get injured off-world. You could die. Replacements are necessary for a healthy society. Parents do not wish their offspring to remain forever as a child; they wish to see them grow and mature. We allow that, albeit at a much slower rate. Do your people not often complain that time flies too quickly with regards to growing children?_

John knew Torren had grown from the baby he’d been when they’d brought Atlantis to Earth. But he was closer to four years in development instead of the fourteen he should have been. “I thought those terrible twos had lasted a long time.” He frowned, thinking of something else that had made no sense to him. “What of the dog? What of Puffin?”

_We have determined there are no others of his kind in this galaxy. He is the One. We will protect the One. Likewise, there is only One Fierce Protector, the one you call Puffin. We will protect the One._

Well, Sarah would be happy to hear that, he guessed. Rodney, too. When they’d declared independence, he’d openly regretted they hadn’t exported more Milky Way animals to the city, including cats. Carson had been working on cloning the animals; a nice little irony, that. It was the only thing that had reconciled Rodney to the future loss of their cat; the idea that Carson-the-clone might be able to clone Puffin one day. “What happens when we go off-world?”

_You leave our protection. We cannot prevent the cellular decay from occurring. When you leave us, the natural process begins again._

“So you want to keep us here, like birds in a gilded cage. It’s not right.”

_You are free to come and go as you wish. We only want you to be happy. To be with us._

“Forever?”

 _Forever is one of your terms. It is not realistic or possible. But many of your lifetimes is_.

He should have known. It had been a trap all along. A honey-coated trap and he’d been too blind to see it. He’d been only too happy to embrace this copy-cat city as his own after wandering the Pegasus galaxy in Fortune for so long. He’d fallen for the city’s bait hook, line, and sinker, setting up his long-dreamt-of colony, putting down roots, planting tava beans, for fuck’s sake. He should have known better. Not only had he allowed himself to be trapped here, he’d brought everyone else along for the ride, too. They trusted him. And look what he’d done.

Stay in control. He had to stay in control of the situation. No matter how angry he was.

“Well, we’ve got a little problem maybe you can solve. The Pegasii are eating the spikeweed. It’s making them sick. You need to make them well again.”

_We regret that is not possible. The energy needs to repair cellular damage due to free radical formation is very slight compared to the energy required to repair cells due to widespread, active destruction. While exceptions can be made, it is not possible to achieve such levels of healing over such a large population, while maintaining our primary mission._

“Which is?” John drawled casually, taking care to avoid grating out the words.

There was a longish pause before the city spoke again. 

_We must move between the light and dark. We must not be found. We are the Last, Best Hope._

“Hold up there.” This conversation was starting to feel eerily familiar. “If I didn’t know better—”

_If our words sound familiar to you, it is because we have found analogies within your personal experience that you can understand._

John processed that one. “Well, I guess it could be worse.” They could have chosen _Galaxy Quest_ instead of _Babylon 5_.

_The depth of your personal experience is truly great, John Sheppard._

Oh crap. He’d have to explain the concept of fictional entertainment to the city at some future point, he suspected. The humor of the situation faded. No matter how he looked at it, this city, this Atlantis wannabe, had them by the balls. “So you can’t help us with the spikeweed? Even though the Pegasii are crucial to you being able to shift between dimensions?”

_To treat them all, and continuing treating them, would greatly deplete our energy resources._

“You could stop protecting us. Divert energy to protecting the Pegasii and let nature take its course with us.”

_It would be—how do you say—“putting a Band-Aid on bleeding artery.” There would not be enough power to heal the Pegasii in perpetuity. In terms you can understand, it is the difference in power equivalence of opening the Stargate between planets, and between galaxies._

“In other words, we’re on our own.” Well, that was just fine by him. They could solve their own problems. They didn’t need a city that was going to keep them around like the little deer in the terrariums. 

He stormed out of the beam and marched toward the door. Immediately, the chill of the room struck him. “Let me out,” he snarled, glancing back over his shoulder at the triangle of light. 

Nothing happened.

“You can’t hold me here against my will. Let me out!” He punched the door with his fist, feeling the skin burst across his knuckles. He grimaced, and shook off the pain, drawing his hand back for another punch.

Behind him, the light gradually faded. As he swung his fist at the door once more, it opened abruptly. John stalked out, sucking his bleeding knuckles as he went.

****

John called a meeting the first thing in the morning. He kept it small. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust every single member of the expedition; it was that what he had to say was of such momentous importance that he needed to run it past a select few first. Accordingly, he asked Rodney, Ronon, and Teyla to join him in a puddle jumper at 0800. As soon as everyone was seated, he piloted the jumper to Fortune, in orbit around the planet.

“Mind telling us what all the hush-hush is about? And why we have to do this so early in the morning?” Rodney yawned mightily and stretched his shoulders until something popped. “What’d you do to your hand?”

John ignored him. Most of his fingers were banged up a bit from the weed pulling. The bandage he wore across his knuckles could be easily explained if he chose to lie about it.

“You call this early, McKay? Some of us have been up for hours, already.” Ronon gave Rodney a particularly toothy grin. 

“Tell me about it the next time you pull an all-nighter fixing some critical element of the city’s infrastructure,” Rodney shot back with an evil glare.

“I do not believe you have had to pull such arduous duty recently, Rodney.” Teyla, as usual, was serene. Perhaps more serene than usual. John guessed that fourteen years without a Wraith attack would have that effect on a person. They’d had it easy—too easy. Injuries still happened on Agartha, as well as disease, but a quick check of the infirmary’s records indicated what John had suspected. Serious injuries and illnesses were rare, and usually occurred in off-world situations. In fact, the only people who’d died since the colony had been formed had been killed in off-world accidents or attacks.

“That’s not really the point, Teyla.” Rodney was sharp, also as usual. “The real issue is that I haven’t had any coffee yet.”

“I believe that _Fortune_ has the blend that you like so much, the one that comes from the Acrtan Mountains?”

One of the things the Athosians had excelled at was raising coffee beans. The lush planet had proven to be a happy recipient of the Milky Way native plant, and in fact, coffee was proving to be one of Agartha’s prime exports, much to Rodney’s delight. It was nice having something to trade with that was self-renewing and didn’t drain their resources the way weapons and medicines did, even if Parrish had been very concerned about introducing a non-native, potentially invasive species onto an alien world. At any rate, there was nothing Rodney enjoyed more than converting people into coffee aficionados. Well, almost nothing, John thought, shooting a covert glance in Rodney’s direction.

“Thank god,” Rodney breathed, sinking back into his seat and dropping his chin to his chest. He was wearing an old ball cap that he’d dug out when they were doing the weeding, and he pulled it down over his eyes, with every appearance of going to sleep. John liked the cap on him, and had told him so. He suspected, however, Rodney wore it more to help hide his thinning hair than because John liked it. Most of the time, Rodney was oblivious to his appearance, and as someone who’d spent his life hearing about how attractive he was, John loved that about Rodney. In John’s experience, people either resented the fact he was handsome, or fawned over him because of it. At least with Rodney, John knew where he really stood. But on those occasions when Rodney became aware of his perceived short-comings in the looks department, it was hard sometimes to get him to see that John didn’t care so much about the hair, or the up and down weight, or any of the things that Rodney thought mattered. At those times, John wished he could make Rodney feel as secure in their relationship as he did. Because it was the light in those blue eyes and that wicked smile that mattered most to John. It was the snappy fingers and the irritable temper and the sheer brilliance of his intellect and the unexpected heroism from a man who was essentially afraid of almost everything in the natural world. It was his Rodneyness.

_You see? That’s what living on this world for so long has done to you. You’ve gone soft._

“Why are we going to the ship?” Ronon asked, picking up on Rodney’s question from before. 

John had been hoping the subject would be dropped until they got onboard, so he answered tersely, “I want to discuss some things with you guys, as well as Elizabeth and Tuny, and I don’t want to be overheard.”

He could tell without looking around that Teyla and Ronon had exchanged glances. Even Rodney lifted the brim of his hat to stare narrow-eyed at John.

“Overheard? By whom?” Rodney lifted the brim of his hat to frown at John. “Wait, is this about the—”

John cut him off. “If you can just hold your horses until we’re onboard _Fortune_ , I only have to go over this once.” Guiding the jumper through the atmosphere and crossing into the flat black of outer space, John breathed a little sigh of relief. Their ship lay just ahead, and John thought she’d never looked so lovely. He’d feel much better once they were aboard. Safer. 

He thrust the concept away like an annoying bug. There was no such thing as safe in the Pegasus galaxy.

His sense of urgency didn’t desert him, even once they were aboard the ship. Rodney sighed and moaned and complained about his pace, but John didn’t slow down, striding down the corridor in the direction of the briefing room. The shipboard crew was a skeleton one, which they rotated every few months to Agartha—and John realized for the first time that this was probably what had kept him from noticing that everyone on the planet was aging more slowly—or did Agartha’s influence extend to orbit? Another thing they would have to find out.

Rodney would have detoured to the mess, picking up a coffee urn and some sort of breakfast, no doubt, but one look at John’s face and he fell back in line with the others. 

“I’ll have some coffee sent up,” John promised.

“You’d better,” Rodney threatened, and then looked worried when John failed to hit the verbal volley back.

Finally, they reached the briefing room. The doors opened, and Elizabeth and Tuny were already there, seated at the table. Something in John’s chest relaxed just a fraction at the sight of Elizabeth in her familiar red and black uniform from their very first year of the expedition, and the way she sat confidently at the table. If he’d blinked, John could have pictured them all at the spacious table in Atlantis’s briefing room; for once, the memory wasn’t as bittersweet as before.

Elizabeth waited until everyone had been seated. “I presumed Rodney, at any rate, would want coffee on arrival. It should be here any…ah!” She smiled when the doors to the room opened and Chuck brought in a cart with several coffee urns and a platter of scones.

“Oh, thank god,” Rodney breathed, transferring two scones to a plate, shaking his fingers and blowing on them when the pastry proved to be warmer than anticipated. He picked up one of the urns, looking suspiciously down lid as he opened it, as if he could tell which blend it was by looking at it.

Looking at it, no. But Rodney inhaled deeply over the urn, closing his eyes as he did so. When he opened them, he nodded, pouring himself a steaming mug. “This one. Good man, Chuck.”

“After all this time, I know better, Dr. McKay.” Chuck rolled his eyes, even as he pushed the cart within Elizabeth’s reach, nodding at her thanks and ducking out the door. She placed the remainder of the food and coffee on the table, and quietly set up mugs for anyone who wanted them. 

After all this time, and Chuck still called Rodney “Dr. McKay.” John couldn’t decide if it was out of respect or sheer perversity, but it was something he counted on just the same. Chuck’s unfailing Canadian politeness. As surely as the sun rose and set every day.

Rodney cradled his cup in his hands, holding it close to his nose, crooning over it until it was cool enough to sip, “Coffee, coffee, coffee.”

Ronon pulled the plate of scones over and selected one, scooting it back to the center of the table. No one else showed any interest in the food. Tuny and Elizabeth, of course, had no need to eat. Teyla just waved it off when Elizabeth offered. John wasn’t hungry. 

He cleared his throat. Now that he was here, he was unaccountably nervous. Glaring at the room in general, he launched into his speech. “We need to leave Agartha.”

“What? Are you _insane_? No, let me rephrase, are you terminally stupid? Hello, everlasting life, or near enough, I think. Why would you want to leave that? Have you thought about everything we could do with unlimited time at our disposal? Everything we could achieve?” Rodney had set his coffee down with a thump, sloshing just a little over the brim. He didn’t bother to wipe it up with one of the napkins available.

Ronon and Teyla just exchanged glances again, the way they’d been doing ever since John had invited them both to be a part of his team. For the first time in his memory, it irritated the snot out of him. He opened his mouth to speak, but Elizabeth forestalled him.

“I presume this has something to do with the delayed aging that Tuny mentioned to me the other day?”

John felt betrayed somehow. “You knew?”

“Not exactly. I mean, I recognized it on some level, because of my connection with Tuny.” Elizabeth had just carefully reminded him that she and the AI were more or less one, so it wasn’t like Tuny had been talking out of school. He swallowed his disappointment and indicated Elizabeth should go on with a little roll of his hand. “It’s just that with the different calendar year, and the decreased need to rely on timepieces here in an agrarian society, it was relatively easy to let the passage of time, um, blur a little around the edges.”

“The harvests are on a normal cycle with the planet. Torren and the other children are growing up, though I have suspected it was more slowly than I would have thought. So I presume this delayed aging is confined to the adult population?” Teyla asked.

John told them exactly what Tuny had shared with him the night before.

Ronon’s face remained impassive. Rodney, of course, already knew. Teyla merely arched her eyebrows. “That long? I would not have guessed. But then one year is very like another here on Agartha, isn’t it?”

John knew what she meant. While the individual days were interesting and varied, the overall pattern of their lives here was fairly routine. While Pegasus could never be taken for granted, the lack of constant threats in their day to day lives made for a peaceful existence. It was only when you sat down and counted up the years that you realized how much time had passed.

“I don’t see what the problem is.” Ronon, as usual, was to the point.

John, however, was flabbergasted. “You don’t see the point? Ronon, everyone will want this piece of real estate once they find out. Wait, are you saying you already knew?”

Ronon shrugged. “I had a pretty good idea. Time didn’t matter when I was a Runner. Staying alive did. Four years or fourteen years, it’s all the same to me. I’m still the same person I was.”

“Teyla?” John shot her a wounded look because if Teyla had known all along as well…

She took a breath and paused, as if measuring her words carefully, not quite meeting his eye. “Calendar dates do not mean as much to the Athosians as they do to your people, John. But we are very much aware of the passing of seasons.”

“And none of you see how much danger we’re in? When the rest of the galaxy figures out we’re sitting in the real Shangri La, everyone and their mother is going to want to take it from us.”

“So you propose leaving first instead?” Elizabeth sounded puzzled, and John supposed he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t set this up very well.

“The Pegasii have been hiding this world for centuries, millennia, even. I do not see where it can be taken by force as long as the Pegasii retain the capability of moving it between dimensions.” Teyla, as always, was the calm voice of reason.

John stared at Teyla in open-mouthed shock. “You, too, Teyla? Seriously? You don’t have a problem with this? What about Torren and the other children? Doesn’t it freak you out a bit that they aren’t developing naturally?”

Teyla spread her hands wide. “Other than a perception that pregnancy is lasting much longer than seems normal, I do not hear anyone complaining.” She leaned forward to speak more earnestly. “It is not as though they are never growing up. They do, John, just more slowly. Your people are accustomed to long lives, but most of us in Pegasus are not. We consider living to an old age a great honor. Few of us would reject the gift of more time.”

“What happens when we go off-world? Can’t you see, this is a trap? We’ve been sucked into making our lives here, to putting down roots. But we can’t leave without starting up the aging process again. Hell, the only reason the people onboard ship haven’t aged without us is probably because we keep rotating them out.”

Rodney had his tablet out and appeared to be doing some calculations. With a final decisive punch of the keypad, he turned it around to show John. “Based on the amount of time each of us has spent off-world in the last fourteen years, I factor the rate at which we’ve aged to be, on a rough average, mind you, approximately eight and a half months, give or take a week or two.” He flipped the tablet back to stare at the data with a fond smile. Like he was proud of it.

“Are you telling me that you _all_ knew about this? Not you, McKay.” John waved Rodney’s protest off; he knew Rodney’s shock the other evening had been real.

The others at the table looked a little guilty as they shared glances.

“I confess,” Elizabeth said, with characteristic frankness, “it selfishly occurred to me I wouldn’t be losing any of you. Not to aging that is.”

John stared at her. She smiled sadly, turning her palms up. “I can’t grow old. Yes, I could’ve asked Rodney to make my holographic image age appropriately with the rest of you, but the truth of the matter is that as long as _Fortune_ exists, I’m essentially immortal. I’m just human enough that it broke my heart to think of eventually losing all of you.”

“We can never leave. The city is baiting us to keep us here—that is, unless we leave now and set up a permanent base elsewhere. The longer we stay, the more addicted we’ll become to eternal youth.”

“Set up where?” Rodney raised an eyebrow and twisted his mouth downward. “In a couple of tents at an Alpha base somewhere? No offense, Teyla.” He shot this as an aside, not waiting for Teyla’s protest that the Athosians had lived that way for centuries. “We’ve got a real chance to make a difference here in this galaxy, and you want us to go back to using bear claws and juju beads.”

“McKay’s right. One of the things you guys kept pointing out was how few societies in Pegasus reached the state of development that Sateda had done, which was why the Wraith had to wipe us out. To make an example of us. Now we’ve got a chance to help others rebuild their cities and defend their homes and get it _right_ this time.”

It was a long speech for Ronon and John hated to stomp on it. “Look, it will never work. We can’t bring kids in for learning like you want because someone’s going to notice that they never grow up—or at least, aren’t growing like they should. Same with scientists who want to come here to study or teach. And the more alliances we make with other societies, sooner or later, people are going to notice we’re not getting any older. They’ll tie it to the city and they’ll come after us.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that.” Rodney tapped his lower lip several times before speaking, his expression faintly apologetic. “I mean, if we limited the course work to six months here and six months on their home worlds, back and forth until they’d completed a four or five year curriculum, hell, who’s going to notice if the kids aren’t growing for six months at a time? I certainly wouldn’t and I’m betting their parents wouldn’t either.”

“I think that is a very good idea, Rodney.” Teyla beamed at him, even as Ronon gave him a full-on toothy grin.

“I think you’re all missing the point here!” Somehow John had risen to his feet, pounding the table as he shouted.

Everyone blinked at him in surprise, as though he’d exhibited bad manners at a posh party. “The city is manipulating us into staying.”

“And you know this how?” Rodney asked. “I mean, we know this isn’t a straight-forward time distortion field because it’s not uniform within the system—there seems to be selective aging across the population. It may or may not have something to do with the fact that the entire planet seems to be able to slip in and out of the space-time dimension at will, but I doubt it. As Teyla pointed out, the crops are following normal seasonal cycles. Still, how do you make the leap from a scientific basis for what’s happening to us to the decision we’re dealing with a malignant Brigadoon?”

“Okay, one: after all this time here, no one has yet come up with a ‘scientific basis’ for what the Pegasii do and how the world goes bye-bye when they want it to.” God help him, he made finger quotes, just like Rodney would have done. They were turning into an old married couple. “And two,” he took a deep breath finished his sentence. “The city spoke to me last night.”

The clamor of voices made it hard to know who to answer first, but as usual, Rodney’s penetrating tenor drowned out the others. “Spoke to you? As in had a conversation? Where and when exactly did this phenomenon take place?”

John explained. Rodney demanded to see video footage, or else it didn’t happen. With a touch of a button, Tuny silently supplied the footage that John didn’t even know existed, which made him a bit nervous when he thought about the last evening he and Rodney had spent in the cabin hologram. No, she wouldn’t. Would she? No. The hologram room in the city was a place where people left recorded messages. It must have recorded his presence automatically. Still, he shot Tuny a narrow-eyed glance.

“Okay, all I see here is you talking to a bright light.”

“I’m having a conversation with the city, McKay. They were speaking inside my head.”

“They?” Elizabeth tilted her head like an interested academic, damn her.

“They. It. I dunno. Maybe it was using the royal ‘we’. She—” he broke off with a muttered curse. “It referred to itself in the plural.”

“I do not see where the city’s intentions are necessarily evil.” Teyla turned a questioning eyebrow in his direction. “Did the city say something to you to disturb you so?”

“Yes. No. Not exactly. It was the way she said it.” 

It felt like everyone in the room was giving him the same skeptical look that Teyla was right now.

“’You’ll just have an empty cage, girl, if you kill the bird.’” Tuny volunteered her first contribution to the discussion into the silence that followed John’s defensive statement.

John swung sharply in her direction. “What?” It was an eerie echo of his accusation toward the city of putting them all in a gilded cage.

Elizabeth coughed. “I, um, well, that obscure reference may be my fault. That’s a song lyric.”

Tuny nodded brightly. “Tori Amos. I confess, the melodic harmonies in her music are often at distinct odds with the darkness of the lyrics. It is inexplicably compelling. I understand the appeal.”

John rested one elbow on the other arm folded across his chest and thumped his fist against his forehead rhythmically a few times. “Am I the only one here who sees the danger we’re in?”

Ronon leaned back in his chair, sliding one elbow up across the top of the seat. “We’re always in danger. Safety is an illusion.”

John pointed at him. “That’s what I’ve been saying! The city has lulled us into a sense of safety. Tempting us to stay here with it forever. Turning us into tava bean farmers, for fuck’s sake!”

For the first time in his memory, Teyla stood up during a meeting that was not yet dismissed. “I, for one, do not see anything wrong with that.” She swept out of the briefing room, as regal as a queen.

Ronon stood as well, chuckling.

“What’s so funny?” Rodney asked, shooting John a quick glance to see how he was taking what amounted to a mini-mutiny among his ranks. 

The grin Ronon turned on Rodney was sly. With his close-cropped beard and the dark curls replacing the dreds he’d had for years, the expression made him seem more dangerous somehow than he’d looked even when he was living as a Runner. “Keller should have stayed.”

On that note, Ronon followed Teyla out of the room.

John sat down heavily, feeling a bit as though he’d been smacked with a two-by-four. If Ronon and Teyla would break with him openly on this, then the chances of him convincing the rest of the expedition were nil. Ronon and Teyla had never refused to do anything he’d asked before, even if they obviously thought it was stupid. It was as though he’d stepped onto what he thought was solid ground and had discovered it was just vegetation floating on the surface of a bog.

Rodney gaped at him, open-mouthed at what had just occurred, then pulled the brim of his hat down and started messing with his data-pad again.

When Elizabeth spoke, she was using her diplomatic voice, the one she used to soothe politicians, angry native leaders, unreasonable children, and the IOA. “Well, it would appear that if you wanted to gauge the reactions of those, ah, closest to you, then you would seem to have an answer.”

“Elizabeth.” John dragged her name out slowly, loathe to hear her response to what he was about to ask. “Are you saying you think I’m wrong? That we should just stay and tamely accept…” he trailed off, unable to put his thoughts into words.

“Captivity?” she suggested with a trace of humor. It dawned on John that Elizabeth was more of a prisoner than he was. She had no choice but to go wherever _Fortune_ went, and if John ordered the ship to leave the planet, Elizabeth would have to go along. “Oh really, John, would it be that bad?”

“It’s not natural. Everything has a time and place. Things… do what they’re supposed to do until other things, you know, come along and do them.”

“I doubt having my consciousness be part of an alien spaceship’s AI is hardly considered ‘natural’, John.” Elizabeth’s voice was a dry as martini, with the same amount of burn going down.

“Well, now we know why you’re not ever called upon to give speeches. Remind me the next time we need a St. Crispin’s Day moment to ask someone else, Colonel Dale Carnegie.” It was Rodney’s turn to stand up, only he didn’t leave the room. He set his pad down and leaned on the table with both hands. “Do you mean to tell me you _want_ to grow old and die?”

“No. Well, not right now. I mean, all in good time. That’s my whole point. I thought you said under the right circumstances—”

Rodney went beet-red and cut his eyes toward Elizabeth, who pretended not to be interested, and Tuny, who obviously was. “I don’t think that’s, ah, relevant to the discussion here.”

Heat rushed into John’s face as well. He couldn’t believe he’d said that in front of Elizabeth. To make matters worse, she was obviously suppressing a smile.

“Ronon and Teyla are okay with this. Well, that makes sense, given the short-life span of the average native of Pegasus. But I don’t see the problem, either, to be honest. And despite what you think, we’re not trapped on the planet. We can come and go at will. Eventually, we _will_ get old. Eventually.” His impish grin made its rare appearance, the one that often tempted John into doing things he knew were Bad Ideas but he was going to do them anyway.

Not this time, however. 

“What about population control? Huh? Did you think of that? Or how about promotions? If no one ages, then no one retires. Who even knows what this process is doing to us anyway? I think we need to do a complete threat assessment with contingency plans that include the possibility of relocation.”

Tuny and Elizabeth said nothing. Rodney, however, could be counted on for the last word. “Yes, yes, of course, because being _happy_ for a change is obviously a serious threat. Obviously.”

****

If John thought the discussion had been tabled for the moment, he was dead wrong. Rodney wouldn’t let it go on the jumper ride back to the city, bringing up point after point in favor of near-immortality.

“I thought you were the one who said we were doomed.”

“Okay, that may have been a knee-jerk reaction on my part when I found out how long we’d actually been here.”

“What about the next time we need to go off-world?” John asked, goaded into snapping. “Are you going to send someone else because you don’t want to shave a few days or weeks off your lifespan?”

“Well, no,” Rodney said slowly, but he didn’t sound entirely sure.

“You wait and see. It will become more important to you than anything else. You’ll tell yourself that the universe needs an eternally young Rodney McKay because of all the good you can do. You’ll hole yourself up on the planet and be afraid to step foot off of it.”

“Surely you can see how valuable even a few minutes of my life could be under certain circumstances, right?”

“See! You’re already doing it!”

“Many people live their entire lives on one planet, John.” Teyla, speaking from behind him, was calm. “I believe this was true of your world until the Stargate was discovered, yes?”

John opened and closed his mouth several times before clamping his lips shut. He didn’t have an answer for that one. They crossed into the upper atmosphere, the sky growing blue as they descended toward the city.

The familiar starfish pattern came into view, if a bit greener than Atlantis. The two cities could be mistaken for one another. They were nearly identical, even down to the phallic-looking main tower. 

They weren’t the same, though. Atlantis had welcomed them, yes. She’d given her all for them, time and time again. John had delivered her into the hands of the people who’d carved her up for spare parts and she’d done nothing to stop him. She’d never said a word to him, either, though she’d communicated with him in other ways. She was like a trained military dog that had survived all kinds of engagements, only to be euthanized at the end of her tour of duty because she couldn’t be integrated back into society again. 

“What does God need with a starship?” John asked suddenly.

“What?” Rodney blinked at him, taking his eyes off the view below.

“It’s the only good line in an otherwise bad _Star Trek_ movie.”

“I know, I know. _Star Trek: The Final Frontier_. My geek card is still intact you know. And friends don’t let friends watch the odd-numbered _Star Trek_ movies.”

“Well, that’s how I feel right now. Like Kirk when everyone is clapping their hands with joy over finding God and he’s the only one asking the sensible question.”

“And you still claim not to be Kirk.”

“Rodney.” He gave the word the two-toned drawl that only he could do.

“No, I get it, Sheppard.” Ronon’s rumble from the back made John glance over his shoulder briefly before entering his descent to the landing bay. “I see what you’re getting at. But did you ever stop to think maybe this is what you guys wanted all along?”

John set the jumper down lightly, years of practice making it almost second nature. He didn’t turn to look at Ronon, instead performing the engine shut down and opening the rear hatch. “What do you mean, big guy?”

“When we first met, when you brought me to Atlantis and said what you were there for—what you were really there for, not what those guys back on Earth wanted—you told me you were going to defeat the Wraith. Make it possible for people to live in peace on their home worlds. Rebuild their cities. Stay someplace long enough to raise a family. That’s why I stayed with you guys. And you did it. So what’s the problem now?”

“And here I thought you sucked at speeches. Way to go, Sheppard.” Rodney held out his fist for John to bump but John ignored him.

“Ronon is right. What we have here in Agartha is what we have been fighting for all this time. What we’ve sacrificed for. What many of us have died for.” Teyla stood up, placing her fists on her hips, unusually stern. “Most of us dreamed of this day but never thought it would come. Why are you having such a hard time accepting this? Anyone would think you still wanted us to be at war with something.” 

“What about the people we’ve left behind, Teyla? The ones that didn’t come here with us? They’re all going to get old and die and we’re _not_.”

“That ship has already sailed,” Rodney said. His face, expressive as always, mirrored the sadness in his voice. “If we went back to Earth today, Madison would be graduating high school. Unless we run into Todd and ask him to skim a few years off us, we’ll always be out of sync with them. We’ll never… look, we knew when we cut ties with the SGC that we’d never see certain people again. For all we know Earth doesn’t even exist anymore.”

“Not helping, McKay!”

“Sorry, I never was one for tact. But you see my point. We gave up the right to pretend we’d ever see them again when we left with everything we needed to set up a colony here—and refused to turn _Fortune_ and Agartha over to the SGC—in case you forgot.”

John shut out the thought of the one person back on Earth that really mattered to him. He’d often wondered what Jim Banks, his father's horse trainer, would have made of the Pegasii. But if John was in reality sixty-something, then that meant that back on Earth, Jim had to be in his eighties…

“What do you think is going to happen when people around here start to notice we’re not getting any older? Huh?” John glared at his team, holding their gazes for a long moment, each in turn.

“That the people from Earth live a really long time. And they’ve got good medicine.” Ronon stretched and scratched his belly under his tunic, giving John a grin.

Sensing he was about to lose his team again, John sighed and motioned toward the hatch.

As they disembarked from the jumper, Carson’s voice came over the radio. “Colonel? Rodney? Can you come down to the med lab? I need to show you something.”

The excitement in Carson’s voice reminded John of Rodney when he’d discovered something new and particularly cool. He exchanged a look with Rodney, who unconsciously rubbed his hands together in anticipation of whatever it was Carson wanted to share. John tapped his earpiece. “We’re on our way, Doc.”

****

“So, what’s up, Doc?” John had been saying this to Carson for years. It never failed to amuse him, even when now when he didn’t have that much to laugh about.

“You’ll never believe what we just uncovered in the database!” Carson practically quivered with excitement, his brogue becoming so pronounced, John had trouble understanding him. “I was looking for something to help Sarah with the spikeweed toxicity in the wee foals, and this directory I’d never seen before just popped up!”

“Let me see that.” Rodney shoved his way between John and the medical interface. “Huh,” Rodney said, tapping a few keys. Schematics rolled by rapidly, and John watched Rodney’s intense absorption of the material, not for the first time entranced by how hot Rodney was when he was in his Brilliant Scientist mode. It was a little reassuring to realize that even ‘after all these years’ (which was a helluva lot longer than he’d previously thought), he still found Rodney’s mannerisms inherently attractive.

John leaned in. “That looks a little like the design for the transporters.”

Carson beamed like a Scottish Santa Claus. “It is! It is! Only for medical purposes!”

“You mean—”

Rodney cut him off, excitement building in his own voice as he shook his index finger rapidly at the viewscreen. “That’s exactly what it is—the equivalent of a medical transporter. Give this thing a cellular sequence and it can ‘beam’ it right out of your body without surgery. A kidney stone—”

“A bacterial infection—” Carson cut in enthusiastically.

Not to be outdone, Rodney snapped his fingers, “Cancer, even. Hell, if we’d had this on Atlantis—”

“Carson Prime never would have blown up,” John finished drily. “No offense, Doc.”

“None taken.” Carson was too enamored with his new toy to flinch at mention of Carson-the-First, who probably would have been here instead, if not for the whole exploding tumor thing. Or maybe not. If he’d survived Pegasus, would the original Carson Beckett have opted to stay on Earth and let his clone take his place in this expedition?

"It makes sense, when you think about it," Rodney said. "If the Ancients created a technology that would cause volatile tumors to develop within a human body, then having the technology to remove them safely sort of follows."

All this introspection was making John’s head hurt. “Well, you boys just be careful with that thing, okay?”

Rodney’s glare was positively withering. “This from the man who once shot me to test the personal shield. Honestly, Sheppard, you’re turning into an old woman. Go away. Carson and I have work to do.”

“Hey, I’m just pointing out that you’d better know how to work the program before you try using it for real, or you might end up taking out a kidney along with the stone.” More offended than he really wanted Rodney to know, John glared back at him before stomping out of the infirmary. Maybe a little time down on the shooting range would clear his head. The personnel in the armory had reported they had a new supply of bullets the design boys wanted to try out in the P-90s. Now was as good a time as any to go check them out.

When he got there, however, Lorne was bent over one of the data terminals with two of the geek squad—Tom Hammond and Paul Decker—two of the engineers that had joined the expedition when they’d gone independent. When the decision had been made to create a real colony on Agartha, they’d realized they wouldn’t just need people who could shoot guns—they’d also need people who could make them. Bullets, too. 

Something about the air of excitement when John entered the room, however, seemed excessive for trying out a new ammo design.

“Whatcha looking at?” John leaned in beside Lorne to view at the monitor.

Evan turned, mouth open to speak and his blue eyes alit with something special to impart, but Hammond cut him off excitedly. “We were just showing the major, sir! These specs! We just found specs in the database for constructing hand-held blasters—very much like Ronon’s. It even includes the design modules for the power source, too! This could completely revolutionize our defenses, Colonel. No more reliance on bullets, but instead an entire force outfitted with blasters!” 

Hammond looked as though he’d just received the best birthday present ever and couldn’t wait to share it with his friends. The surge of excitement John felt at the news was almost immediately quashed by a simmering anger. He did his best not to show it, though. “Don’t lose your heads, guys. There’ll always be a need for bullets, even if it’s only as a back-up. It’s going to take a while before we even know if these work, right?”

That sobered them a bit, but not much. “Yes, yes, of course, Colonel. Not to mention we’ll have to mine the raw materials and assemble a working prototype before we can talk about mass production. But still, this is probably the best discovery we’ve made since we’ve been here. A superior weapon that is totally reliant on Pegasus-based materials with a renewable power source. The SGC would just die,” Decker said, tugging Hammond away with him in the direction of the labs, still hunkered over their tablet as they walked, and speaking animatedly to one another.

“I thought you’d be pleased.” Evan’s statement had a questioning note.

“I would be if it wasn’t so goddamned suspicious. You heard about the discovery in the medlab, right?”

Lorne nodded, a frown creasing his forehead. 

“Well, how come all the sudden it’s like Christmas around here?”

He didn’t have an answer. But John did. And he didn’t like it one bit.

It was evident in the way the doors opened well before he arrived at their thresholds, and the way the transporter took him to the gym without him selecting a destination. He stalked into the workout room looking for a fight, which Ronon was glad to oblige. He wasn’t holding anything back, either, which took Ronon a bit by surprise when John landed a solid hit.

“I always suspected you of pulling your punches, Sheppard.” Ronon smiled, wiping the blood from his cut lip. 

“You going to chat all day or fight?”

John could tell from the way Ronon pursed his lips and distended his cheek that Ronon was pushing against it with his tongue. The action was followed with a slow nod that told John he was in for it now, but he welcomed it. He met Ronon’s punches with a fierce glee, giving as good as he got, until Ronon’s longer reach, his undeniable youth, and his sheer alien-ness finally wore John down. Ronon got him in a headlock on the floor made him yield.

“Finally,” Ronon said, helping him to his feet. “After all these years, you finally gave me a decent workout.”

John grimaced a smile at Ronon, which turned into a hiss as he felt a small cut over his cheekbone open. He stared at the blood on his fingers after touching his face. He didn’t even know he’d taken a hit there. 

“Feel better now?” Ronon tossed him a towel. 

He wiped his face and head, grateful for something to do. Leaving the towel slung around his shoulders, he looked up at his friend. “You think I’m over-reacting here, don’t you?”

Ronon shrugged. “You’re always saying if something is too good to be true, it usually is. Usually doesn’t mean always, though. Besides, it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”

“Teyla’s pretty pissed with me.” They walked toward the exit together.

“She’ll come around. She’s pregnant again, you know.”

“Why am I always the last one to know these things?” John complained. “Didn’t I say last time that I needed to know these things before we went out in the field?”

“It’s been a while since we’ve been off-world. And she wanted to be sure before she said anything. She was going to tell you today, only you announced this morning we should pack up and leave here.”

John nodded. Teyla’s actions of the briefing made more sense in that light.

“Thanks for letting me know, big guy.”

“Don’t tell her I said anything. Teyla scares me.” 

John suspected Ronon was only half-joking as he made a sketchy two-fingered salute in John’s direction and headed off to his quarters.

John went back to his own quarters that he shared with Rodney, desperately seeking a shower and some dry clothing. He stripped efficiently on entering the rooms, tossing his clothes into the laundry chute, where they would be cleaned and returned. Puffin looked up from her nap on the bed and yawned widely, showing every tooth and her little pink tongue as she did so, but as it was nowhere near dinner time, she put her head back down and curled her tail around her body once more.

The shower came on when John entered the bathroom. He gave it a dirty look, but paused only long enough to check out his face in the mirror before stepping into the spray. The cut was more of a scrape than anything. No stitches needed. When the water hit his face, however, it stung like hell, making him curse. Still, the shower was exactly the right pressure and near-scalding temps he preferred and he felt the tension in his sore muscles relax under the pounding water. A little voice suggested he could get used to this.

He was in the middle of getting dressed when Rodney burst into the room. 

“John!” The look on his face was electric. Rodney rarely called him by name. They’d known each other for almost four years before Rodney had ever used his first name. John had always been “Sheppard” or “Colonel” or some made-up title, like “Colonel-I’m-fine-thanks-I-have-more-than-one-kidney.” Even now, the times that Rodney used his given name were important, and John could tell from Rodney’s beatific expression this was one of them.

Rodney didn’t even notice John was only wearing a towel, which usually caught Rodney’s attention in powerful and pleasurable ways.

“What’s up, McKay?” Two could play it cool.

Rodney grabbed him by the arm. “You have to—I can’t—Oh my god.” Rodney paused to take a deep breath, his exhilaration making him sputter with the effort to control himself. “I found it. I finally found it.”

“Found what?” A little worm of suspicion reared its ugly head while John waited for Rodney’s answer.

“In the database. Looking for something else. There it was!”

Rodney couldn’t even speak in complete sentences. John braced himself for the revelation to come. “Yes?” He hoped he didn’t sound as sour as he felt.

“Design specs for ZPMs. ZPMs, John! I’m sure, given enough time, I’ll be able to recreate the technology. We’ll be able to make our own ZPMs! Think of what we can do with that kind of unlimited power!”

Rodney had let go of John’s arm to do a little jig as he spoke. He kept saying ‘Zed’ every time he abbreviated the Zero Point Module term, and while John had always found that unbearably cute (okay, maybe not _always_ , initially he thought it a horrible affectation), now it irritated the fuck out of him. As far as Agartha was concerned, this was a declaration of war.

“You see what’s happening here, don’t you?” John pulled out the intense voice, the one he reserved for interrogating the Wraith and baiting super villains. 

Rodney looked confused. His brow furrowed and the corners of his expressive mouth pulled down. “No, I don’t. What are you talking about? Am I missing something here?”

“The city is fucking _seducing_ you!” John roared, unable to hold it back any longer. “You! All of you! Carson and his new surgical toy! Lorne and rest of the military with new blasters. And you, you of all people—handing you the Holy Grail of technology like it was…like it was a prize at a fucking carnival!”

Rodney reared back at the vehemence of John’s statement. “Whoa, wait, what? Are you saying you’re _jealous_?”

“No!” John yelled, slinging off his towel and jerking open a drawer so hard he almost emptied the contents onto the floor. Rodney, he noticed with the still, observant part of his brain, didn’t even seem to register than John was naked in front of him. Furiously, John dragged his clothing on over his damp skin.

“No, that’s it! I’m right. You’re just jealous because _this_ city doesn’t roll over and beg for you the way Atlantis did! You’re not the favorite son here, are you? Even if you can talk to flying horses.” Rodney flattened his upper lip over his teeth, pulling his mouth down at the corners as he shook his head a little from side to side mockingly. 

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, McKay!” John hitched his pants up over his hips with a little hop when the material clung to his skin, fastening his belt a notch tighter than usual.

“Your nose is out of joint because Agartha loves the rest of us just as much as she loves you. We’re all special here.” Rodney pointed his index finger at John and then folded his arms over his chest with a small huff and a nod, as though the argument was over and he was the clear winner.

“It’s not a she!” John snarled. He didn’t know what the fuck this city was, but it wasn’t female.

“Whoa. Where are you going?” Rodney asked, perplexed as John began tossing clothing into a duffle bag. 

“I’m taking the cat and going to _Fortune_. When you’re ready to talk some sense, you can find me there.” John gathered the duffle and the cat, who gave a plaintive ‘mew’ at being summarily snatched off the bed where she was napping.

“You can’t be serious.” Rodney gaped at him, open-mouthed. “The greatest technological find since we’ve been in Pegasus and you’re going to go sulk onboard the ship? Wait, did you say we’re going to get blasters now?”

“See you later, Rodney.” John slammed out of their quarters, the cat tucked under one arm.

Rodney followed him out into the hall. “You’re being a big baby about this you know! That’s my cat, too, by the way!”

John kept walking, not even looking back as he shouted. “Puffin prefers the cabin and you know it!”

Over the intercom, music suddenly blared. It was the middle of a catchy song that John didn’t recognize, but the female vocalist sang of raising up her hands to drive another nail in, and having enough guilt to start her own religion. 

“You stay out of this!” John shouted at the nearest wall, unable to shake a fist as his hands were full. Puffin squirmed and tried to get down, but John held on tight. Tapping his earpiece with his shoulder, he contacted Lorne. “I’m taking a few days off. You’re in command.”

It was a measure of Lorne’s supreme fitness as 2IC that he didn’t even question this unusual demand. “Aye, sir,” he said crisply. “I have command.”

****

Three days later, John was bringing in an armload of wood for the stove when he heard Hawkeye barking. He looked up from his careful ascent up the stairs. He’d spent the morning shoveling snow, but the stairs were still slick with a thin layer of ice. The German Shepherd was frolicking happily in circles around Teyla and Torren as they walked up the driveway. John set the load of wood down on the porch, noting the little cloud of his breath in the clear, cold air as he did so. He leaned on the railing, watching the approach of his guests silently. 

It was below freezing out. He’d only stepped outside to grab some wood for the fire; he was wearing just an old red and black checked flannel over his usual black T-shirt. According to the weather program he’d selected, it had snowed again overnight, bringing the totals to about eight inches. He was conscious of the fact that he hadn’t shaved since his arrival and was more than a little scruffy. He’d been in full-on cabin mode since he’d holed up in the holodeck—chopping wood, reading books, doing a little cross-country skiing. He folded his arms over his chest and waited.

He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that Teyla had come to see him. They fact that everyone had given him his space so far had been unusual enough. Lorne or Chuck had only contacted when something absolutely needed his attention. He knew he was licking his wounds a bit by hiding out in the cabin. It was ironic to think of how all those years ago now, he’d been the one to seek out Rodney when McKay had run off to the real cabin up in Canada. Back when they’d lost Atlantis. A flicker of guilt stole over him as he watched Teyla guide a very happy Torren through the snow. She knew him well. They’d come dressed for the weather. Well, it had been snowing the first time he’d tracked Rodney down at the real cabin back on Earth. He liked snow. It made everything seem fresh and pure. A pristine, unbroken surface from which to start anew. Like Antarctica.

He hadn’t heard a word from Rodney in three whole days. Even though he’d been the one to walk out, that hurt.

The dog, spying him on the porch, accelerated toward the cabin, leaving Teyla and Torren behind in his glee to greet John enthusiastically, paws slipping on the slickness of the snow-packed paneling where John had shoveled it. John had just bent to take the dog by the collar, hoping to calm him before he wiped out on the deck, when Hawkeye sent snow flying into John’s face as he shook it off his coat. Then, typical of his breed, he leapt off the porch and raced back to the others, chivvying them like lost sheep to join up with John. Teyla reached the foot of the stairs, laughing as she stomped snow off her boots, one hand on the railing as she climbed. John wiped his face with the back of his sleeve and waited for her to reach the top.

“Uncle John!” Torren flung himself on John, expecting to be caught in a hug, which, of course, he was. He was bundled up like the Michelin Man in several layers of clothing, his cheeks rosy with the cold. 

Teyla handed John a cloth-covered rectangle. “ _Jeela_ bread,” she said with a smile. “Baked this morning. I know how much you like it.”

John took the dense loaf. It was more like coffee-cake than bread; the sweet-tart flavor of the _jeela_ fruit combining nicely with the nutmeg and cinnamon of Earth. It was a perennial favorite on Agartha. It would go well with the Mountain Roast John had brewing on the stove. He wondered if Teyla had made it herself or if she’d gotten some from Miko. While Teyla’s cooking skills had definitely improved in their time on Agartha (which _really_ made sense now, given how bad she was before and how much practice she needed), Miko’s baked goods were the stuff of legends. 

Torren was already back down the stairs and scooping up big fistfuls of snow to toss in the air. Hawkeye leapt up, trying to catch the powdery substance, his face dusted with ice crystals. 

“I do not intend to stay long. Sarah came aboard _Fortune_ to synthesize what she and Carson hope will be an anti-toxin for the spikeweed. The number of animals affected is quite small now, and there have been no more new cases.” She didn’t have to add that the medlabs onboard _Fortune_ were more sophisticated than anything within Agartha. Between Tuny’s superior intelligence and Elizabeth’s time with the Replicators, and all those months in space when Rodney had nothing to do in between plotting new potential locations of the ‘mythical’ city, _Fortune_ had a few modifications even the Ancients hadn’t thought of. “I promised her I would take Hawkeye and ‘blow the stink off him’, as she likes to say.”

She smiled fondly at the dog, which was trotting around her son in a large circle with Torren’s cap in his mouth, obviously pleased with this new game of keep-away. Torren chased after him, calling him a bad dog. The way the dog’s tail waved proudly as he moved, John could tell he wasn’t particularly affected by the scolding.

John loved Teyla, but he knew he was probably in for one of her patented lectures. Manners that his mother had once instilled in him demanded that he invite Teyla indoors to partake of the _jeela_ bread and some coffee. Teyla would sit down across from him at the table, and cup the warm mug in her hands, smiling to herself a bit as she began her speech. He didn’t want her there, sitting in Rodney’s chair, admiring the holographic cabin that Rodney had designed as a replica of the real cabin, a surprise birthday gift for John one year. 

How many years ago was that? John no longer knew. The point was, if he was to have a conversation at his kitchen table with anyone, it should be with Rodney.

Still, it was freaking cold out here on the porch.

“Do you want to come inside?” He indicated the door with a tilt of his head.

Teyla smiled enigmatically, as though she had read his mind. “No, thank you. We won’t be long.” She faced the yard again, where the dog and child continued to play.

The silence was deafening. Well, okay, Torren’s excited cries and the occasional bark of the dog were normal, happy sounds. Almost too normal. John felt the weight of Teyla’s unspoken words crushing him and he shifted uneasily, rubbing one hand against his flannel sleeve at the crisp cold. Still, she said nothing.

“Okay, okay,” he said grumpily. “I’m sulking here in the cabin. There, are you happy?”

The look she gave him was one of gentle pity. “Did you think I came here to lecture you, John?”

“Well, didn’t you?”

“No, not entirely. I wanted to see how you were doing. Rodney was certain you would return to the city before now, you know.”

_Hah. I bet he did._

“Yeah, well, Rodney knows where to find me. If he can tear himself away from the labs and his new discovery, that is.” He hated the sound of petulance in his voice and clamped his mouth shut.

Teyla didn’t roll her eyes. She did, however, press her lips so tightly together that they almost disappeared. John was suspicious she was suppressing either a laugh or a sigh. Maybe both.

“Rodney believes,” Teyla began carefully, as one might inch out onto a frozen lake, not entirely sure if the ice would bear weight, “that you are jealous of the attention the city is giving many of the members of the expedition.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it, Teyla.” Okay, so maybe it was a little irritating that they’d been here for fourteen years, damn it, and only now, when it looked like John might relocate the colony, did Agartha decide to open the treasure chest of goodies to entice them to stay.

She nodded. In the yard, Torren was attempting to roll the base to a snow man, but the dog attacked his efforts, wallowing on the ball of snow until it was flattened. Torren yelled at him, and then discovered a stick under the snowpack. He threw it as far as he could, and the dog went bouncing after it. “Yes, I believe that is Rodney’s own jealousy speaking. There were times, back on Atlantis, when he would express, ah, irritation over what he perceived as the city’s preference for you, despite the fact he was so often called upon to repair its systems.”

John stared at Teyla. He’d never thought about it before. Not like that. Not like Rodney’s grumblings had really meant anything.

“Ronon believes your unwillingness to accept what Agartha has offered us so freely is because this city is not _your_ city. Because it is not Atlantis.”

“Well, Ronon’s full of shit, too.”

Teyla raised an eyebrow at him.

“Okay, maybe that’s a bit true.” He pinched his index finger and thumb close together to show just how small a fraction of truth was in Ronon’s supposition.

“You must admit, had we been on Atlantis when all of these discoveries were made, I do not think you would have been so suspicious of them.” 

Teyla, damn her, didn’t look cold at all. Well, she was wearing a parka and gloves, which was more than he could say. He shoved his hands into pockets. “I dunno about that. The Ancients weren’t exactly known for having the best ideas. See exhibit A: exploding tumors. Exhibit B: Ascend or Die machines. Exhibit C—”

“I said as much to Ronon. Particularly because I suspect the real problem is that you do not believe you are deserving of happiness.”

“Oh, come on, Teyla! That might have been true once, maybe. But we’ve been here over a decade. And I’ve been happy. I’m proud of what we’ve built here. I know I don’t always sound like it, but I am.”

“I do not dispute that. I find it interesting, however, that you were not upset until you had spoken with the city. I believe that this contact disturbed you somehow. I think you are afraid of letting the city down.”

“Teyla—” he started, only to realize he had nowhere to go.

“You loved Atlantis with all your heart. That city, that place, those people. They brought out the best in you, John, and you brought out the best in them. And you feel that you let the city down when you flew it back to your home world to fight the Wraith that had made their way there. You would have gladly sacrificed Atlantis and everyone in it to save your people but you were not prepared for the fact that your people would refuse to allow the city go back to Pegasus. That they would divide her amongst themselves like spoils of war.”

“They might as well have put up a ticket booth and charged admission because when they were done with her, she was nothing more than a museum.” The bitterness in John’s voice tasted of bile. She was right. Oh, she was right. Atlantis was his responsibility and he’d done nothing while The Powers That Be cannibalized her as efficiently as beetles picking flesh off a rotting carcass left out in the desert sun.

“You feel that your connection with this city is disloyal, somehow?”

He shrugged. He didn’t know what he felt. “It’s not the same. I can’t explain.”

She nodded again, as though she hadn’t expected any other answer. “Well, I should be getting back to the jumper. I believe Torren and Hawkeye have played in the snow long enough.” She smiled, touching his arm. “Elizabeth would like a word with you about the treaty with the Finnarks.”

“She could’ve just radioed me herself.” There was that petulant note again, but somehow he couldn’t help it.

“Yes, she could, John.” Teyla sighed this time. “But she knew I was coming and that you wanted your privacy and she chose not to disturb you anymore than she had to. Also, sometimes she likes to pretend that she is a corporeal being. It hurts nothing to humor her.”

“Jeez, Teyla. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to guilt me into leaving this hologram and taking over my duties again.”

“Now what would give you that idea? Besides, she told me to ask you if you were ready to leave your ‘Fortress of Solitude.’ I believe she had been waiting quite a long time to be able to use that particular phrase.” She laughed, taking hold of the railing as she carefully navigated the slippery stairs into the yard. “Time to go, Torren!”

“Hang up there a sec, Teyla. Aren’t you forgetting something?”

She turned her face up toward him, framed by the synthetic fur of the parka. Though most of the Athosians still practiced the old ways, ever conscious of the fact that they could always be forced into being nomads again, most of them had embraced the superior warmth of Earth-based winter clothing. A gust of wind stirred up ice crystals, flinging them into the air, where they glittered in the sun. She shielded her eyes with one hand.

“The baby, Teyla. When were you going to tell me you’re pregnant again?”

“All in good time. I see that I will have to go thump Ronon, however, for sharing my news with you.”

“Did I say Ronon’s name? I’ve got eyes, you know!” Alarm at the trouble he’d gotten Ronon in—and himself, secondarily, made him speak rapidly.

“Uh-huh.” She patently didn’t believe him. “I will be pregnant for a very long time, John. Surely you will not let this affect my immediate activities as a part of the team?”

John was forced to waffle. Damn it, his training and upbringing said that pregnant women did not go on dangerous missions, toting assault weapons or whacking people with their Painful Rods of Doom. It didn’t help, either, that she’d been pregnant with Torren when Michael had kidnapped her and used their DNA to create his army of monsters. His one serious argument with Teyla had occurred when he’d discovered she was pregnant just after they’d been attacked on an off-world mission, and anger and adrenaline had made him say things he’d later regretted. But if Kanaan merely shrugged and let her go off into battle without protest, it was hard for John to do more. “We’ll talk about it,” he finally said.

She gave him a knowing look before clapping her gloved hands together. Torren and the dog came charging to her. As they walked back along their footprints toward the exit of the holodeck, John heard Teyla’s lovely voice rising over the wind. She was singing as she swung Torren’s hand in her own, and whatever it was, the song sounded familiar.

John was almost inside the cabin before he recognized the lyrics. It was that damn Tori Amos song again. “Crucify.”

****

“Someone please explain to me again why I’m needed here?” Rodney’s complaint wasn’t new by a longshot, and frankly, John thought he had a point this time, though he’d be damned if he agreed. “Everyone knows diplomacy is not my strong suit.”

“That’s a fact.” Ronon’s comment came right on cue, and for the first time ever, John recognized that this banter, even though it was often meaner than anything he and Rodney had ever exchanged, was just as much a part of Ronon’s relationship with Rodney as any of the snark John and Rodney had exchanged. It was a weird feeling, acknowledging that for as unlikely as it might seem to an outsider, Ronon and Rodney were friends.

Elizabeth was wearing her ‘Mom’ face as she spoke to them. “As I’ve already explained, Rodney, this part of the Finnarkian treaty negotiations requires the presence of our leaders at a ceremony on their home world. As I am unable to travel there, John is going in my place. Seeing as it is a patriarchal society, that is probably not a bad thing.” 

Rodney opened his mouth—no doubt to forestall what he perceived to be a lecture on misogyny—but Elizabeth cut him off. “However, the Finnarks specifically requested your presence. They wish to thank you personally for solving the problem with their power grid, and I believe the council elders intend to honor you at the celebratory feast.”

“Feast, award ceremony, thankful natives. Sounds right up your alley, McKay.”

The look Rodney shot him, complete with a small nod, was one of grudging agreement. It wasn’t that he and Rodney weren’t speaking to each other, but they hadn’t exactly fallen into each other’s arms either. John had waited until the very last moment to turn up for this mission. He’d gotten his notes on protocol from Elizabeth and had gone back to the cabin until it was time to leave for the ceremony. 

Rodney had never come to the cabin, and John had reluctantly shaved at last, refusing to acknowledge that a part of him had held off because he knew Rodney liked the Colonel-on-Vacation look.

Rodney, had, however, asked about Puffin the first chance they had to speak privately.

“She’s fine.” John had said. They had been waiting for the transporter to take them to the Gateroom. Ronon and Teyla had mysteriously disappeared; each claiming they had something important they needed to do before they left for Finnark.

“Right, right, of _course_ , she is,” Rodney had muttered, a bit obscurely. “Why would she be anything other than ‘fine.’?” Rodney had made finger quotes, even though he’d seemed to be talking to himself more than John. Suddenly he’d looked John dead in the eye, his gaze intense and compelling. “If she’s going to stay with you in the cabin much longer, you’ll need to pick up some cat food before you head back.”

John had rubbed the back of his neck, realized what he was doing, and brought his hand to rest casually on the butt of his P-90. “Yeah, well, I probably won’t stay much longer. Lorne is making noises about the workload.”

Rodney had visibly relaxed, the tension oozing out of his hunched shoulders. A smile made a tremulous appearance about his lips before his usual irritated expression dominated his face again. “Yes, well, speaking of which, I’ve sent you an update on the information we’ve gathered on the ZPM production. It’s not going to be easy. We’re going to have to have a designated facility, and one off-world at that. It’s going to be decades before we can even attempt the energy harnessing process and even then—”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you, Rodney.”

It was the closest thing he’d come to an apology and they both knew it. Rodney’s face hadn’t just lightened; it became incandescent. John had been tempted to pull out his shades. They’d gotten into the lift as though nothing had happened.

John was glad they’d smoothed things over before leaving for the ceremony. A good party, and any awkwardness there might have been between them would vanish as though it had never existed. He was glad, too, that he’d included Teyla on this mission despite his reservations about her going off-world while pregnant. She’d joked that anything to make her pregnancy last a shorter period of time was a good thing, and he’d given in, knowing it was the right thing to do. Her diplomatic skills were superior to any of the rest of them, especially Rodney and Ronon’s. The treaty should be a sure thing; Teyla’s presence would ensure that nothing anyone said would screw that up. It was good, too, going out on a mission with his team, just like the old days. It felt right.

Even if Rodney had started some sort of countdown on his watch the minute they stepped out of the Gate onto Finnark soil. Presumably so he could figure out later how much time he’d lost while off-world for the evening.

Like most worlds they’d visited, the Finnark community was several kilometers from the Gate. No one liked the idea of enemies appearing in their midst without warning, or at least, no smart person did. Rodney, as usual, complained about the distance they had to walk, and wondered aloud why they couldn’t have taken a jumper. Teyla pointed out politely that the disparity in technology could be viewed as an act of intimidation, whereupon Rodney entered into a spirited debate with her as to whether or not the obviously advanced technology couldn’t also be viewed as an enticement to form an alliance with the Agarthians.

It was the first time John had heard themselves referred to in this manner. The Agarthians. They’d been the People from Earth, and the People from the City of the Ancestors. They’d been the Pegasus Expedition, and in turn, the Atlanteans, and the Outsiders. They’d been the Ones Who Woke the Wraith and the ones who’d brought wholesale destruction to worlds when the Replicators decided that starving the Wraith by cutting off their food supply had been a good idea.

But they were also the Ones Who Stopped the Wraith. And the Replicators, too. They had a reputation for being brash and foolhardy, but generous with their skills and supplies, and tough in a fight. They had wreaked great havoc, stomping through Pegasus in hobnailed boots, so certain they knew what they were doing and that they were right in taking the actions they’d made. Pegasus had bitch-slapped them again and again. John hoped by now they’d learned something. A little common sense. To look before they leapt. 

But Agarthians? The term made John curl his lip. Surely there had to be a better name for them. He kept silent, though, assessing their surroundings instead of joining in the conversation as they progressed toward the city, noting with approval that Ronon was doing the same.

In due time, the city appeared in view. It was still quite a distance away, and Rodney groaned. Silently, John agreed with him. The day was becoming warm, and the shimmering spires of the small city had to be at least another hour’s walk away.

“Hold up,” John said, spying a slow moving caravan on the road coming toward them. He pulled out a pair of binoculars from his tac vest and scanned the travelers. “Looks like a welcoming committee. Elder Dontel and Councilman Hareth, among others. Guess you’re getting a ride into town after all, McKay.”

Rodney’s hopeful expression faded when he realized they’d be going by cart. “Ugh. Pulled by those reindeer-looking things that smell so bad. Seriously, I bet the inside of a tauntaun smells better than those Rudolph-wannabes.”

“Tauntauns are fictional,” John observed.

“That we _know_ of,” Rodney said darkly. “I’m betting somewhere in the universe, there really is an Empire with storm troopers and evil warlords, and we just haven’t run into it yet. Big place, the universe.”

“You just want special powers again, like when you got caught in the Ascension device.”

“Use the Force, Luke,” Rodney intoned.

“I’d rather run into the Marvel Universe. Dibs on the Iron Man suit.”

“You can’t call dibs on Stark’s suit like that! You just changed universes without warning! Although, Ronon would make a pretty good Hulk, and I’d back Teyla over Black Widow any day.” Rodney tapped his lower lip. “No, you’re all wrong for the suit. _I’m_ Iron Man and you know it.”

“That leaves me with the shield? No thanks, McKay. I don’t see myself as the super soldier type.”

“True. You’re not as earnest as Steve Rogers. You could be Falcon, though. Then you’d have your own flying suit. It would be more aerodynamic and maneuverable, too. Right up your alley as a pilot. No, wait, I’ve got it! You’re Spiderman!” Rodney tossed his head back and snapped his fingers as though it was obvious all along. “How many times have you scaled Atlantis with just your fingers and toes? And you have the whole ‘bitten by a radioactive bug’ thing in your past, too. It’s creepy.”

“The proper thing to do would be to meet the advance party,” Teyla pointed out. 

As they began walking, John muttered to Rodney, “I dunno about Teyla taking on Natasha and winning. She’s awfully polite, you know. I’m betting Romanov fights dirty.”

“I have very acute hearing, just in case you have forgotten.” Teyla didn’t even look back. Ronon didn’t bother hiding his amusement.

In a relatively short period of time, they caught up with the party advancing to meet them.

“Welcome, welcome!” Councilman Hareth was a jovial little man. With his pointy hat and his long grey beard, he reminded John of a garden gnome. Dontel, on the other hand, was a tall stick of a man, and though he was smiling today, his overall nature was about as sunny as Eeyore’s. John half-expected the guy to sigh sadly and bewail the loss of his tail.

The passengers disembarked from the covered cart, a gaily painted affair that looked as though it could house a dozen gypsies comfortably in the back. It was pulled by six of the reindeer-type animals, and as Rodney had predicted, they stank to high heaven. “This is a great day for our peoples! We have such a wonderful program planned for you all. But first, I must introduce to you Saylex, our city manager. Saylex has been so eager to meet you, Dr. McKay!” Hareth presented the man standing next to him as though bestowing a great treat on Rodney. 

Saylex clapped his hands together and made a little bow. “Oh, this is such an honor, Dr. McKay! Our engineers have done nothing but sing your praises, and truly, the way with which you improved the grid efficiency is nothing short of astonishing. Our power levels are up by fifty-nine percent! We no longer have to ration the use of energy, and we’ve been able to go back to pumping water straight into homes. I can tell you, the women of the city will fall down at your feet and worship you for that alone!” Saylex laughed loudly at his own joke.

“Yes, yes, well, glad to help. It was really only a matter of solving the—”

“I’m afraid all that engineering talk is over my head, Dr. McKay,” Saylex waved him off.

John barely managed to contain his snigger at the look on Rodney’s face. Ronon exchanged a quick grin with him, while Teyla looked as though she wanted to roll her eyes and say, “Boys.”

“Come, come, we have a big day planned.” As Saylex spoke, several of the other passengers came forward, and more introductions took place all around. Everyone was dressed in their finest outfits; John was starting to think his team should have brought a change of clothing for the party.

Ronon hung back during the handshaking and introductions, merely nodding when John introduced him at large. The only woman in the group, politely demure in the background, perked up with interest at Ronon’s name. 

“Oh!” she said, and it was almost as though the word broke forth from her involuntarily. “Please, it is permissible to ask? Were you the one who was once a Runner?”

“Rytek!” Hareth clucked and scolded. “You must excuse Rytek, my friends, she is one of our most dedicated healers and she has the curiosity of a _jik-jik_.” His words were genial but the dark look he and the others shot in her direction was not.

“I don’t mind.” Ronon said, quelling further censure. “Yeah. I was a Runner. Until I met these guys. They took the tracker out.”

“Really?” Dontel spoke with amazed respect. The others murmured astonishment and awe as well, and John saw their alliance value kick up another few notches.

“Then we made the mistake of feeding him. We could never get rid of him after that.” Rodney’s dry tones took everyone back for a moment, but Rytek suddenly laughed with delight, and the others joined in as well, realizing it was a joke.

“We can’t give you much of the details on that,” John drawled with his best smile at Rytek. “We’re not medical doctors ourselves. But I tell you what. I can set you up with the doc that took the tracker out and he can tell you all about it.”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.” Rytek beamed at him, then dropped her eyes and stepped back behind the others, satisfied that speaking out of turn had been worth the possible displeasure that might get heaped on her head later.

 _We should have brought Sarah with us. Miko, too. Damn it, if we want these cultures to stop treating their women like second class citizens, we need to show them that we value what people can do, not what color their skin is or what sex they are._ He was doubly glad he’d brought Teyla now.

Rodney, predictably, had gotten bored during the conversation as they were sorting through who was going to sit where on the ride back into the city, had taken out his data pad and made a few notes. John watched as Teyla resolved the seating arrangements, which were threatening to turn into a kind of Chip and Dale thing, where each member of the party would be honored to give up their seating and happily walk back into town. In the end, it was settled that as the guest of honor, Rodney would ride, as would Teyla, but that John and Ronon preferred to walk. Hareth and Rytek would ride as well, as would several of the council members, but surprisingly, Dontel chose to walk. A muscular, silent man, who had not been among those introduced, remained by his side. Bodyguard of some type, no doubt.

It only remained for the driver of the caravan to turn the team of reindeer-beasts around before the group could return to the city. John’s team stood back out of the way along with the welcoming committee as the driver clucked up his team and started the process of turning the wheeled wagon. The ground alongside the graveled road being soft, it had been determined that it would be best to turn the caravan while it was still empty. John watched with interest as the wheel animals barely moved, serving as a pivot point for the team leads as they slowly swung the heavy cart around.

“Hey.” Rodney sounded preoccupied. John glanced over at him and saw he had a Life Signs Detector out and was studying the screen. “Are you expecting more people joining us? Because there are a number of people hanging out on that ridge up there.”

“Where?” Dontel’s voice cracked like a whip. 

John, Ronon, and Teyla instantly went on alert. Out of the corner of his eye, John noted that Dontel’s bodyguard stiffened as well.

“Up there.” Using the LSD as a compass, Rodney turned to face a low tree-covered rise behind them. He was just lifting his hand to point when John got one of his Bad Feelings.

John caught Rodney’s arm before he could lift it. Rodney shot him a puzzled frown, but instantly read the tension on John’s face and stopped resisting. Instead, he tilted the scanner for John to see.

“Three people. A bit spaced out for a casual stroll, don’t you think?” John didn’t wait for Rodney to respond. The placement of the unknown people on the ridge suggested they were either snipers or scouts. “We’re kinda exposed here.” 

Before the caravan began its cumbersome turn to face the other direction, it had shielded them from the ridge. But now they were in the open. “Any reason to suppose we’re in danger?” John directed his question to Dontel.

“Oh, surely not!” Hareth protested.

“Possibly.” Dontel shared a glance with his bodyguard. “There has been a great deal of heated discussion among various political factions as to whether or not an alliance with you Agarthians would be a positive or negative thing.”

“Debate only!” Hareth blustered. “No one would be stupid enough to—” He broke off, looking alarmed. The other council members shifted uneasily.

“Take cover now, talk later,” Ronon suggested.

“Agreed.” John nodded at the wagon, which was still making its turn. “If we head toward the caravan, it will block us from any view from the ridge. 

Instinctively, the group clustered together as they headed for the thin protection of the caravan. They reminded John of a flock of sheep, and he only hoped nothing would spook them. He dared not use his binoculars to scan the ridge himself. If someone was watching them, the flare of sunlight on the lenses would tip off the watchers to their state of alertness. Let them think everyone was joining up with the wagon. Only a moment more, and they’d at least be partially out of view.

They didn’t have a moment more, however. John heard a high-pitched whine ending with a small spit of sound, and Dontel’s man slumped to the ground, an arrow all the way through his neck.

“Run!” John shouted, shoving Rodney toward the caravan and diving to the ground. He wasn’t going to have the range with the P-90, but he could lay down some suppressing fire that might get the others to safety. “Ronon!” 

“I’m on it.” Ronon was already running, dodging and twisting as though dancing with unseen opponents, forging up the hillside until he was in the cover of trees. John sprayed the upper side of the hill with bullets, knowing Ronon would swing wide of his line of sight. Once Ronon hit the tree line, he completely disappeared within seconds. 

John sent several bursts of gunfire toward the ridge. A flash of light caught his attention and he realized that at least one of the archers had a scope. An arrow thunked into the ground too close for comfort, quivering less than a foot away from his shoulder. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before—a dull black metal shaft with orange fletches. As he glanced at it, the arrow began to glow from within. As John watched, the fletching melted. Right, whatever it was, he didn’t think he should be that close to it. He rolled to his feet, running toward the caravan and firing up the hill at the same time.

Ahead, he could see Rodney and the councilmen crouched behind the caravan, along with the driver of the vehicle. A shower of arrows fell, and one of the rein-beasts bellowed with fear and pain. The entire cart lurched forward, giving John an idea. “Make them go!” he shouted. “Into the woods up ahead. Run alongside them!”

He could see Teyla nod with comprehension and she leapt gracefully into the driver’s seat, taking up the reins and slapping them on the rumps of the animals closest to her. An eerie undulating war cry burst from her throat, and the reindeer creatures sprang forward as though shocked with a cattle prod. 

Damn it, that’s not what he meant! Teyla was a sitting duck out there in the driver’s seat. He rushed to catch up to the caravan, but another arrow whined through the air and struck one of the lead animals. With a heavy crash, the reindeer-beast went down, causing the one behind him to stumble and fall as well. The remaining draft animals panicked, trying to kick out of the traces, unable to move forward but unwilling to remain in place. The entire caravan swayed, and there was screaming at it began to tip over. John got there just in time to catch Teyla by the hand and swing her down. She walked across the rump of one of the thrashing beasts and landed lightly beside him. One of the wheels from the cart spun lazily in a circle as the reinbeasts bawled and tried to escape. A knife flashed into her hand, and before John could stop her, she darted in among the flailing animals and cut the harness in several places. He pulled her back just as another arrow thudded into the ground beside her. The reindeer-creatures crashed out of the remaining bits of leather holding them down, leaving their dying brethren as they galloped off in all directions.

“Some of them may return to the city,” Teyla explained. “If so, people will start looking for us.”

John couldn’t argue with that, even though his instinct to protect Teyla warred with his need to use her as a team member. Together they ducked behind the front of the wagon. “You cover this end. I’m going to check on the others. Our best bet is to sit tight and let Ronon take out the archers, but there’s nothing that says they are alone. Stay sharp.”

She nodded and took her position. From her vantage point, she could see through the slats in the driver’s seat up toward the ridge. 

One of the councilmen, leapt up from behind the shelter of the caravan and ran for the woods, yelling with uncontrolled fear. An arrow struck him between the shoulders and he went down all in a heap, as though a marionette whose strings had been cut. He didn’t move again.

“Nobody panic!” John ordered, thumping his shoulder against the side of the caravan as he took cover alongside the others. “Stay put! We have the situation under control. McKay? How many?”

Rodney had the LSD out and was scanning the rise covertly. “I read four, no, make that three, life forms on the ridge.”

“Anyone else out there we need to be concerned about?”

Rodney made a small sweep with the LSD and shook his head. “Not that I can see. The range is a bit limited, though, as you well know.”

“Well, is it three or four men on the ridge?” One of the councilmen demanded.

“It was four,” Rodney said carefully, as though speaking to a child. “Now it is three.”

“Three shooters? We’ll never escape. We’re doomed.” Hareth had lost his hat and his wispy gray hair blew in strands across his forehead. He nervously wiped them back. “Those arrows—they’re Guild Assassins. None of us will survive.”

John exchanged a glance with Teyla, who nodded as though he’d spoken. “Teyla and I are going to hold our fire now. Ronon’s in position.”

“What are you doing?” Hareth shrieked. “You have to defend us! You can’t stop shooting!” He squealed as several arrows were released in quick succession, one tearing its way through the caravan to poke through the wooden slats between John and Hareth. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Blacktok assassins never leave any witnesses! You have to take them out!”

“We can’t take a chance on hitting Ronon.”

Hareth’s fear was naked and raw, but any pity John had for him had been lost at his next words. “Who cares if you hit your man! We’re all going to die here!”

“Shut up, Hareth!” Rytek snapped unexpectedly. “Doctor McKay, how many life signs do you see now?”

“Two,” Rodney said his voice smugly relieved in the way only Rodney could achieve.

“But how? I don’t—”

"What part of 'He was a Runner' don't you understand?" Rodney was scathing.

“For seven years,” John added."I think he can handle a few assassins."

Hareth just gaped at him.

“Hareth is right, however, these are Blacktok assassins. They are the best money can buy. This is very bad. Someone must have wanted the treaty to fail beyond any hope of redemption to go to such great lengths.” Dontel sounded calm, but his hands trembled as he clung to the overturned wagon. 

“No offense, but your internal affairs are up to you. I just want to get us out of this current mess alive.” John smiled grimly at the far off whine of Ronon’s blaster. They shouldn’t be in danger much longer now. 

“We can’t stay here. Dontel, you _know_ we can’t stay here.” Hareth inched away from the arrowhead coming through the bottom of the cart. John saw that it was glowing a bright orange now.

“What aren’t you telling us?” Rodney’s question was so cutting that Hareth jumped.

“The arrows. The ones the guild assassins use.” Everyone turned to look at Rytek. “They emit radiation. Even a small amount of time in their unshielded presence can be fatal.”

Rodney instantly backpedaled away from the arrowhead, and John had to grab his jacket to keep him from inadvertently exposing himself to the archers.

“Well isn’t that hunky-dory?” Rodney fumed when John released him. “How is it the assassins can handle them, then?”

Rytek shrugged. “It is believed that the weapon is not activated until it is released from the bow. No one really knows for certain, however.”

“Well what kind of radiation are we talking about? You know what? Never mind.” Rodney handed the LSD to Rytek. “Watch this screen and tell me when this white dot reaches that white dot.” He pulled out his scanner and fiddled with the settings.

“What happens then?” Rytek asked.

John tapped the screen, where two former white dots now were blinking red. “It means Ronon got the last archer and we’re safe.”

“But how do you know that these white dots aren’t the assassins?” Hareth’s voice was calmer, but still a bit shrill.

“Because, _this_ white dot is moving away from _tha_ t white dot. Very fast. Like he’s running.” Rytek beamed, turning the LSD around to show Hareth.

“Praise the Ancestors!” Hareth breathed.

“Oh, _shit_!” Rodney looked up from his scanner, his face pale, sweat dampening his hair. “John, these guys are right. We need to get far, far away from these arrows.”

“Ronon will—”

“I don’t think there’s time. I think we need to put some distance between these arrows and us right _now_. These things are emitting gamma-radiation. The longer we spend in their presence, the more we absorb.” 

John thought hard and fast. “What kind of range are we talking about?”

“We need to be at least twenty feet away. More if possible.”

“We should make a run for it,” Dontel said, nodding at Rodney’s words. “If we all go in different directions, the single archer cannot hit us all.”

“If he is indeed still shooting.” Rytek held up the LSD. “He seems to be busy at the moment.”

“If we give Ronon a few more minutes…”

Rodney shook his head and pointed at the bodyguard’s corpse, which lay in the open where the man had fallen. The arrow no longer glowed, but the corpse itself looked as though it been barbequed. For a split-second, John was back in Afghanistan, watching as medics picked through the smoking wreckage of a helicopter, looking for survivors. He swallowed the bile that had risen suddenly, and faced the group again.

“Okay. Here’s the plan,” John said. He hated this plan, but it was the only one he had and above all, it was important for everyone to think he had the situation well in hand. “On the count of three, everyone scatter. Don’t run straight—zig-zag as you go—and get to cover as fast as possible. I’ll stay here and provide cover.”

“John—”

“You heard me, McKay. I’ll be along behind you, but someone’s got to hold the fort until the civilians get cleared. On the off chance our assassin is still targeting us, I’ll be the distraction while you guys get out of here. You, too, Teyla.” He was sick about the potential radiation she and her unborn child might have already absorbed.

“We won’t forget this, Colonel.” Dontel said with a finality that sounded very much as though he was saying goodbye. John couldn’t decide if Dontel thought John had gotten the short straw or not.

“Don’t count me out yet, Elder,” John said, hefting the P-90 into position. “Ready? On my mark: one, two, three!” John began shooting over the top of the caravan, not looking to see where the others were headed. 

He couldn’t hear anything over the staccato rattle of bullets as he fired, making short bursts at the base of the ridge before working slowly up toward the last known location of the shooter. Just enough to make him nervous. Who knows, maybe the guy would make a mistake and run straight into Ronon. John made three such passes before dropping down behind the caravan. He heard two arrows whine in flight in short succession, one after the other, and wood splintered near his shoulder as one of the arrows burst through the bottom of the cart. He’d just popped his head over the top of the wagon to fire again when he heard Ronon’s voice give the all-clear on the radio. The last archer was down.

“Good job, big guy. Stay away from the arrows, though. Rodney says they might be radioactive.”

He stood, relieved it was over and he could now round up the others and see that they got back to the city safely. He touched his earpiece as he looked around to see where everyone was. “Teyla, Rodney. Ronon got the last one.” He could see people still running for the tree line. Rodney was right; they should have brought the jumper. Next time John would listen. They were going to have fun rounding up their lost sheep.

Something in the open grass caught his attention. He didn’t understand what he was seeing at first. A bright blue spot of color in the green meadow. Like someone had tossed off a sweater. His heart stopped beating for a moment, then thudded to life again, revving a thousand times faster than he thought possible. No. No, it couldn’t be.

He didn’t remember yelling Rodney’s name, though the sound of his yelling stopped the other runners in their tracks. He ran toward that blue color, that splash of pigment that didn’t belong in the emerald-green grass, faster than he’d ever run before. He was almost on top of Rodney, where he lay so still and quiet, when Rytek tackled him. He spun around with the force of her contact, but shook her off like she was an annoying insect. She went tumbling into Teyla, who’d caught up with him at the same time.

“You can’t!” Rytek cried out. “There is nothing you can do for him! It will kill you too!”

John ignored her, crashing to his knees beside Rodney. The shaft of the arrow had gone through his shoulder. He lay face down on the ground, one arm flung out in front of him as he’d fallen. “Rodney!” John’s voice was hoarse, as though he’d been yelling for hours. He was dimly aware of the people of Finnark returning, to gather around at a polite distance.

Rodney’s fingers trembled, shuddering with pain and shock. He was still alive. Something could be done if he was still alive. John attempted to turn him over, only to discover Rodney was pinned to the ground. Cursing, John took him by the shoulders and eased him up, rolling him partway into John’s lap. The arrow went all the way through his chest, the tip caked with dirt and grass. Rodney opened and closed his mouth several times but couldn’t speak. His breath came short and fast, trying to avoid the pain, trying to breathe around what had to be a collapsed lung.

“It’s going to okay, buddy. You’ll see.”

Rodney mouthed the word ‘liar’. The fingers that gripped John’s arm had mud under the nails from where Rodney had scrabbled in the dirt. A horrible gurgling sound emanated from his mouth, and flecks of bloody foam appeared.

“We need the jumper!” John barked. No one moved. He snapped his head up, glaring at Teyla, who still supported Rytek. “Did you hear me?”

“John.” Teyla’s voice held a lifetime of heartbreak and sympathy in it. “You are the only one who can fly the jumper. There is no time.”

Even as she spoke, the shaft of the arrow began to glow.

“No!” John thundered, furious now. He still cradled Rodney in his arms. “Not like this. It’s not going to be like this!” 

Ronon came running up, only to slow to a stop and stand beside Teyla and Rytek. “We need to get help,” Ronon shouted, frowning at the two women. “Sheppard can go for the jumper. I’ll carry him. Or I can go to the jumper and dial Agartha. Beckett can come and—”

Teyla stopped him when he would have gone forward. She shook her head at him. Shocked, he looked at John holding Rodney and back at Teyla again.

“You must come away, John.” Teyla’s voice was oh-so-gentle. John wanted to yell at her, to tell her not to use that tone of voice with him, damn it. It was unacceptable.

Rodney grimaced in pain and reached around to the shaft at his back. John stopped him before he could touch the arrow, watching in horror as the cloth around the arrowhead began to blacken and curl. He needed to get help. He had to get Rodney to the infirmary. He needed—in a flash it came to him.

He needed Agartha.

It was funny the strange things that went through his mind at that moment. He recalled the guys on _Top Gear_ talking about ‘psychic brakes’, which were the kind you needed to apply before you knew you needed them. He thought about the conversation he and Rodney had been having less than a half hour before, and he could hear Rodney imitating Alec Guinness as he told Luke to ‘use the force.’

_Luke. Use the Force._

In his arms, Rodney’s face was turning gray. So was his hair. The skin on his face was softening into folds, like tissue paper. Rodney had wanted to grow old with John; he was getting his wish.

_I need your help._

He wasn’t sure who the plea was aimed at, but suddenly there was a large clap of noise above, like a sonic boom, and then there were Pegasii everywhere. John heard gasps from the Finnarks, but he only had eyes for the flying horses. Four of them: a black, a bay, a chestnut, and a gray. They landed in a circle around John and Rodney, coats and wings gleaming in the sun.

_We are here._

Storm Dancer walked up to John and then dropped to one knee, bowing along the straight line of his other foreleg, raising his wings to plainly offer John space on his back. 

“Help me,” John said to Ronon, staggering to his feet under Rodney’s weight. Ronon supported Rodney almost effortlessly while John climbed onto Stormy’s back, and then carefully positioned Rodney so he was draped across John’s lap, the arrow sticking out of his back an angry red now. Ronon padded the point of the arrow with his leather vest so it wouldn’t scrape the stallion. 

Ronon and Teyla mounted the bay and chestnut respectively. Only the gray was rider-less, which made sense in a weird, twisted sort of way. As if they would have been able to get Rodney to ride one of the Pegasii anyway. John wanted to laugh, wanted to share the joke with Rodney, but all he could do was look down at his hand holding Rodney’s warm body across his lap, and noticed the thickening of the joints of his fingers. Rodney felt as though he was burning up, and John knew he probably was, from the inside out.

All four Pegasii rolled into a slow canter, beating their wings slowly until they had lift off. They rose majestically into the air. Another thunderclap of sound, and John felt that same sort of bitter cold he recognized from Gate travel, along with the sensation he was being pulled in several directions at once. It lasted but a second, and then they were looking down upon Agartha.

John had never been so happy to see that moldy-green hunk of junk in his life.

The Pegasii landed on the south pier. Teyla was already radioing in for medical support as she slid off the side of her mount, but Stormy wasn’t done. With another sonic boom, John, Rodney, and Pegasus were in the middle of the infirmary. The black horse spooked when a technician squawked, dropping a data pad. He back up, hooves slipping on the tiled floor, his wings knocking over an IV stand.

“Whoa, whoa, buddy. You got us here. We’re good, we’re good.” John slithered off Stormy’s side, unable to keep Rodney from going down to the floor. “Doc, he’s been shot with a radioactive arrow. You’ve got to—”

“I know, lad. I’ll take it from here.” Beckett’s team lifted Rodney onto a gurney, placing him on his side, technicians in protective gear rushing up to wheel him away from John’s sight, the entire team running as they moved him into another room. Beckett went with them, leaving John with the decontamination team, already suited up and ready to receive him. He waved them off a moment, however, to calm the winged horse.

He was shocked when he looked at Stormy. The black’s shining muzzle was shot with gray now, and his spine sagged in the swayback of advanced age. The large brown eyes no longer gleamed but were cloudy and dull. The hand John placed on his neck was that of an old man, heavily wrinkled and mottled with age spots, and he recognized the ache in his bones from when Todd had fed on him, that time when he’d been a prisoner of Cowen on the Genii home world. He’d been exposed to radiation, then, too, only the Wraith had restored him completely once they’d escaped. This time he knew he wasn’t go to be so lucky. That he could handle. It was the sacrifice of the Pegasus that would kill him.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” John kept repeating the words, his face buried in the coarse mane.

_I could do no less._

John was aware his face was wet when he lifted it at last, conscious, too, that someone was calling his name and urging him to come with them. John followed the team to the decontamination chamber, knowing it would do no good. He could only hope that Ronon and Teyla had been far enough away the entire time to have limited exposure. The last thing he saw before he stepped into the chamber was someone attempting to lead Stormy out of the infirmary.

****

Something was touching his nose. Light, feathery. Most likely a hair or thread of some sort. Maybe a fly. John brushed at it irritably. It stopped for a moment, then returned. This time, accompanied with a chuckle. 

John opened his eyes. Ronon was leaning over him, tickling his nose with a glossy brown feather. John recognized it as coming from the wing of a Pegasus.

He sat up abruptly, noting he was dressed in scrubs and in one of the infirmary beds, an IV drip hanging from one arm.

“Ronon.” Teyla chided.

“What? It was about time he woke up.”

“Rodney?” John asked, tossing back the covers and swinging his feet off the bed. The room spun when he did so, and Ronon steadied him with one hand.

“Rodney is doing well.” Teyla hastened to assure him. “Carson was able to remove the arrow with the medical transporter device that he had discovered last week. Rodney will need some time to recover, but as he is already complaining quite loudly that his pain medication is inadequate to his needs, the general consensus is that he will be released sooner rather than later.”

“And you guys? The radiation?” He didn’t say, ‘And the baby?’ but he knew Teyla heard it anyway. 

“We are all fine. Including the Pegasii. It would appear that once we were on Agartha, the effects of the radiation were nullified. Carson is still not sure how that worked, exactly.”

“He just muttered something about massive cellular damage and DNA manipulation,” Ronon volunteered. “He seemed pretty surprised by it.”

“He declared it nothing short of a miracle. He did say, however, that he believed the healing of the radiation sickness was another form of its anti-aging program.”

Ronon snorted. “I think he’s just glad the city doesn’t plan to take over his job.”

John looked at his hands. They were his hands again, the same hands he’d seen every day for the last decade or so. “Cool,” he said at last, getting to his feet. “Where’s McKay?”

“I do not think—”

“Come on, Teyla.” Ronon grinned widely, chucking a thumb down the infirmary ward for John’s benefit. “I thought you said you were meeting Kanaan and Torren for dinner?”

With a final glance back at John, Teyla allowed herself to be taken away. John watched them go with a smile, then padded down the quiet infirmary, wheeling his IV stand behind him. Several of the beds were curtained off. When he reached one with the sound of beeping monitors, he pulled the curtain back to reveal Rodney sitting propped up in bed, reading from a data pad.

“Hey,” John said.

“Hey, yourself. Can you believe they’re going to keep me here another three days? I feel _fine_.”

“You look pretty damn fine, too, for someone that was a radioactive shish kabob a little while ago.”

Rodney pressed the heel of his hand to his left shoulder. “Gah. Don’t remind me. Carson won’t give me the good meds anymore, either.”

“You can’t have it both ways, McKay. Either you’re good to go, in which case you don’t need the meds, or else you need to be here. Which is it?”

“Oh, you’re a fine one to talk, Colonel-As-Long-As-I’m-Still-Breathing-I-Can-Kill-You. The Black Knight has nothing on you for tenacity in the face of adversity.”

“Your nicknames for me are starting to get ridiculous.”

“I’m running out of the good ones. We’ve known each other almost twenty years now.” Rodney’s expression softened; he seemed awed by the numbers as well. He laid the pad down on his lap. “At least I got a room with a view.”

John stepped up to Rodney’s window. Below, the ocean shimmered beneath the city, the sunlight glinting off the water with a glare almost painful to see. Above, Pegasii rode the air currents, soaring lazily in looping patterns above the city’s towers. Stormy was one of them, coasting past the window and gliding off to catch another current. John could have sworn when he passed that the stallion winked.

_Thank you._

The stallion waggled his body from side to side in acknowledgement, then folded his wings up close and went into a powerful dive, snapping them open again just inches from the surface of the sea, skimming along the water like one of his father’s sailboats back on Earth. He placed a hand on the glass and stood watching, until the Pegasii wheeled out of site around the edge of the city.

Turing from the window, he scooted the IV stand closer to Rodney’s bed. “Shove over,” he said, not waiting for Rodney to move before climbing in.

“Hey! There’s not enough room for the two of us. Get your own bed.”

“You have the better view.” John made himself as comfortable as possible, taking Rodney’s hand.

Rodney had opened his mouth to say something, but shut it abruptly when John clasped his hand, fingers entwining. John could tell Rodney wanted John to look at him, but John continued to calmly stare out the window.

When John spoke at last, he gave Rodney’s hand a little squeeze. “You sure you’re okay? Carson didn’t remove anything important with his magic transporter?”

“That’s first thing I asked, as a matter of fact. He assured me that he was able to remove the arrow—have I mentioned how much I really hate arrows? Because I really, really hate them—with the transporter and the city seems to have done the rest. I don’t remember much after I got hit, but I get the impression it was pretty bad.” 

He shot a glance at John from beneath ridiculously long eyelashes. John used to tease him that only girls had eyelashes like that. 

“Girls would _kill_ to have my eyelashes,” Rodney had retorted with serene smugness, which pretty much put paid to John using that as a weapon.

John noted Rodney’s covert glance and said, “Nah, it wasn’t that bad.”

“Right. Because Colonel Touchy-Feely _always_ wants to cuddle with me post mission.”

John laughed outright at that one. Rodney tried to cover John’s mouth with his hands. “Stop with the Eeyore laugh. Do you want Carson to come chase you out?”

John caught one of Rodney’s hands and brought it up to his mouth for a gentle kiss. The action made Rodney catch his breath for an instant. He smiled, but turned beet-red at the same time.

The smile lasted until John spoke. “You're never leaving the city again.”

The inevitable outburst came. He couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t mean it. Why, who was going to oversee the development of the new ZPM facilities? And it wasn’t like they had so many people they could just excuse him from going. Everyone had to have their turn with off-world duty. It was only fair and right. Now who was being the big baby, wanting Rodney to stay wrapped in cotton wool for the rest of his life? 

John waited until Rodney had begun repeating himself before he interrupted. “You’re never going off world again because I’m not going to do forever without you.”

“Okay, that’s incredibly sweet in a mind-numbingly sappy kind of way, and I must be suffering residual brain damage from the radiation because part of me would really like to pat you on your fluffy head right now and beam at you for being a hopelessly closeted romantic all these years—”

“Fluffy?”

“Yes, fluffy. Because obviously your head is stuffed with hair and what we see on the outside is where the stuffings are leaking out. Where was I? Oh, right. You’re so far in the closet you’re making the monsters that hide there uncomfortable. And as endearing as your heartfelt plea to keep me on this planet might be, may I remind you, Zed. Pee. Ems. Hell, Earth might even be with speaking terms with us again over that one. So you can just forget about keeping me a prisoner here, bucko. It won’t work.”

“Bucky?” John faced Rodney, the better to deliver one of his patented smiles.

“Bucko,” Rodney said firmly. “You’re not listening. Besides, if you were Bucky, that would make me—”

“Steve,” John said, leaning in to brush his lips lightly with a kiss.

“Wait, what? No! If you’re Bucky and I’m Steve, then that means you ship—” Rodney broke off, a knowing expression sliding over his face. “Oh, I get it. You think you can distract me with wild talk about ships, when you’ve never done that sort of thing before. Well, it’s not going to work. I _am_ going on off-world missions again.”

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” John said, kissing him again. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“Well, yes and no.” Leave it to Rodney to get in the last word. “I’ve been talking with Radek—”

“You were mostly dead a little while ago. You couldn’t have waited until the morning on this one?”

“It’s pretty important.” All humor had vanished from his face. John had seen this sort of look before, when the long-range sensors had first identified a Wraith armada on its way to attack Atlantis at the end of their first year there, when he’d discovered the Replicators were wiping out entire planets in an effort to starve the Wraith because of the old codes Rodney had reactivated. Maybe whatever it was Rodney had to say wasn’t as bad as those revelations, but it was close.

“What is it?”

Rodney disengaged his hand from John’s to pick up the data pad. He tapped the surface, then tilted it to show John the screen. “We’re down to three quarters of a ZPM. This morning we had two fully charged modules. Tonight we have three quarters of one.”

It was a moment before John could speak. “How?”

“Oh, I think you know how. I think when the Pegasus flew through the space-time dimension on their little rescue mission, bringing us back here so the city could do its laying on of hands trick with us, it consumed tons of power.”

“It tried to tell me that the other night.” John ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “That repairing cellular damage to prevent aging was one thing, but healing on wide scale was totally different. How bad is it?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. We can still use the Gate. We could probably fly if we had to. We still have shields. But I don’t know if the city can wink us out of existence anymore. We could be sitting ducks here now, for all I know. So you see, I have to get to work on making new ZPMs. It’s going to take time, but the sooner we get on it—”

“Right. I’ll talk to Stormy tomorrow and find out what that means in terms of planetary defense. I think you get to take the night off as well. For being skewered and nearly roasted alive and all that.” Tonight all he wanted to do was lean back with his arms around Rodney and breathe in his familiar scent, knowing that he was still there, still alive. Even that was going to have to wait, however. He closed his eyes, gathering his energy for what he had to do next.

“Ah, Pegasus galaxy,” Rodney said, brushing the back of John’s hand with his fingers, as though he was scratching Puffin. “Never a dull moment, is there?”

“It wouldn’t feel like home if it was.”

****

Later, after Carson had chased him back to his own bed, red-faced and clucking like a fussy hen, John had quietly disconnected his IV line, a piece of tape with a cotton ball attached dangling from his mouth as he removed the catheter from his arm. He pressed on the bleeding vein with his thumb until he could catch the tape with his other hand, draping in the general direction where he wanted it to go until he could clamp his hand down over the tape and wind it around his arm. He’d gotten good at this sort of thing over the years. Hell, he barely got any blood on the sheets. 

His hands were another story. Slipping out of the bed, he made his way into the small lavatory at the end of the medical suite, and quickly rinsed his fingers. He could sympathize with Lady MacBeth. There were times when he felt he could never get all the blood off his hands.

Obviously, his clothing was a total write-off due to the radiation, which was a pity. That had been one of his favorite T-shirts, washed so many times it was almost gray rather than black. Scrubs would have to do for now. Making sure no one was watching, he snagged a spare radio on his way out of the the infirmary and headed back to his quarters. He needed to be fully dressed for what he was about to do next.

****

He ran into Sarah Abbott and Hawkeye his way to his quarters.

“Oh, there you are, Colonel,” she said, as though she’d been looking for him. “I’ve got some good news.”

She seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he was wearing scrubs, and he found it refreshing not to have someone looking at him as though he was a fresh steak on the grill. “You found a cure for the spikeweed toxin?”

“Well, no, not exactly. A treatment, yes. And the last of the foals was discharged today. No, David wanted me to let you know that he’s discovered an herbicide that can be sprayed on the fields that won’t hurt us or any animals, so we’ll be able to treat the cultivated areas without risk to our food supply. The best part is that this chemical seems to make the spikeweed unpalatable to the Pegasii, so no more weeding! We can spray the crops, kill the excess weed, and the Pegasii will still have access to the stuff in the wild, but in the limited quantity they had before. Isn’t that wonderful?” Hawkeye, sitting quietly beside her for a change, opened his mouth in a big yawn. John knew how he felt.

“Discovered, eh?”

“Yes! In the database. He has no idea why he didn’t come across it sooner, but at least we have a plan for next year.”

“I love it when a plan comes together.”

She narrowed her eyes, tilting her head slightly as she looked at him as though seeing him for the first time this evening. “You’re quoting something at me, aren’t you?”

“Ask Ronon about it,” he said with a smile. Ronon liked old television shows and movies where things blew up.

“Oh!” The fact that he was barefoot and in scrubs finally seemed to be registering. “Ronon told me about the mission to Finnark! Are you sure you should be out of the infirmary?” 

“Just going to pick up my cat. Rodney would never let me here the end of it if I left her in the cabin overnight without dinner.” He gave H a pat on the head.

“You look tired. Why don’t you ask Elizabeth to feed Puffin tonight and you can pick her up in the morning? I’m sure she won’t mind.”

“That is a brilliant idea.” One less thing on his to-do list, and it would please Elizabeth to be asked. The more he thought about it, the more it appealed. Right now he wanted nothing more than to head back to the infirmary and see if Carson would let him take Rodney home. It was unlikely, but it was worth a shot. Otherwise, he’d be sleeping on the chair beside Rodney’s bed again, and Carson had a kind heart. But he had something else to do first, and he couldn't do it in scrubs. “Goodnight, Sarah.”

She smiled, happy to have made a useful suggestion, and clucked to the dog as though he was a horse “Goodnight, Colonel. Let’s go, buddy,” she said. H pranced beside her as they walked down the corridor.

He tapped his radio. “Elizabeth,” he wheedled as he walked slowly back to his quarters. “Can you do me a big favor?” 

****

He ran into Daniel Jackson a few minutes later. Literally.

A spurt of guilt shot through him at the sight of Daniel, his sandy-blond hair growing long enough again to flop over his glasses, wandering the halls of the city, nose deep in an old book. The book, whose leather bindings were cracked and flaking with age, must have been interesting. Daniel didn't even look up, but plowed right into him.

"Oh!" He looked surprised to see John, and even more surprised to find himself in the corridor. "Sorry, didn't see you there."

The guilt deepened when John realized he hadn't even noticed Daniel was missing from the weed-pulling parties. "You okay, there, Doc?"

Daniel's smile was truly beautiful. John felt a little sad for him that he was all alone. "Yes, I'm fine. I discovered an entirely new section of the database, including a library!" He held up the book, still beaming at John. "I'm afraid I've been down there for days. Did I miss anything?"

John assured him he had not. As he watched Daniel walk away, his attention back in his book, two things occurred to John. One: maybe Daniel had everything he wanted or needed these days. And two: he needed to institute some sort of mandatory check in system for the expedition members. He'd talk to Lorne. Evan would take care of it.

****

The message room was as it was before. Dark and empty, save for the strong beam of light pouring down from above. It looked like a spotlight, as though he was a prisoner about to be interrogated or a performer about to take the stage. Of the two, he preferred the idea that this was all a big show, that he was but one player in an on-going drama. 

He’d dressed for the occasion. Black T-shirt and gray BDUs. His 9 mm in a thigh holster on one side, a knife that even Ronon would envy on the other. His combat boots were neatly laced. He’d dug out the watch Rodney had given him for his birthday back where they were still in Atlantis but he’d never worn because it probably cost as much as a small car. Black wrist bands, he had plenty. As far as his clothing was concerned, he might have been the same man that had walked through that Gate into Atlantis all those years ago, but he wasn’t. Oh no. Not by a long shot.

He didn’t wait for the city to acknowledge him. He didn’t move into the light. He leaned within the frame of the open door, crossing his ankles, thumbs hooked into his belt loops. 

“I know what you’re up to here.”

There was no visible change in his surroundings, but something quivered in the air just the same.

“I get it. You want company. You want everyone to like it here. You’re handing out gifts left and right, like a rich parent who wants to buy his kid’s love. That may work with the others, but it won’t work with me.”

It felt as though the city was holding its breath, waiting for his next words.

“But I recognize what you did here today. I know how much it cost you. I owe you.” He straightened, standing tall, his hands clenched in fists. “I may not like it, but I owe you. And I pay my debts.”

He took two steps into the room, shading his eyes with one hand as he looked up into the vaulted ceiling, where it disappeared into the darkness. “Thank you.”

He waited a moment, but nothing happened. Mentally shrugging, he turned to leave. A breeze rippled through the room as he moved for the exit, swirling around him and ruffling his hair.

 _You’re welcome_.

He stood in the doorway, his head half turned over his shoulder, looking back into the room. The light behind him shone as brilliantly as before, but John knew his audience was over. _Until next time, then._

~fin


End file.
